Sudden Onset Madness
by kyamei
Summary: A year post-finale, Don is sober, working, and has his life together. But Sally has been acting strangely. Don thinks it's grief, but it soon becomes evident that it's much more than that. A weird Mad Men Medical Mystery with guest stars from House M.D.
1. Chapter 1

**Okay, so this is a weird fic. I wrote it not really thinking about posting it, then I finished it and thought what the hell, maybe someone out there enjoys it. It's mostly Mad Men, with canon relationships, but starts to feature a couple of House M.D. characters as it goes on. You can skip those parts, or just roll with it. You don't really need House MD background to understand it, they're just my stand-in doctors. The crossover part was fun, though.**

 **This a long story, but it's finished. I'll be posting it every few days until it's all here.**

 **A few disclaimers:**  
 **\- I based most of the medical stuff off of a fic of my sisters' (which is strictly a House MD fic. If you don't mind spoiling yourselves, you can look for it as "The Man with no Face" by Kaelan, at fanfiction dot net. She in turned based hers in a book she lists in her fic.**  
 **\- I've tried to be accurate but I am not a doctor, nor was I alive in the 70s.**

* * *

/

DON

Wednesday Noon, December 1, 1971

/

"Mr. Draper, I've got Mr. Francis on the phone. He says it's urgent."

Don straightened up on his chair and cast a panicked look towards Peggy, who was just laying out her storyboard.

"I'll call you later. I have to take this," he said. Peggy frowned, eyeing him closely, but she folded up her leather book and stepped away. Before closing the door behind her she turned towards him, a wary droop in her eyes, and Don guessed she could imagine the reason for that call.

He breathed in deep, his hand shaking, and picked up the phone.

"Henry," he said. It happened, he expected to hear. She's gone.

"Don, I need you to pick up Sally. She's at home. She says she wants to stay with you for a few days."

Don dropped his hand and instinctively started to reach for his drinks cart, then remembered it wasn't there. He sighed. Thank God.

"Of course. I'll come by at lunch. Is there any, uh..."

"It's a good day," Henry knew what he meant. "She was stronger this morning. She's a fighter."

A fighter. He would've never believed it before all this.

"Henry, I... I thought Sally wanted to be... She said she wanted to stay..." He didn't want to say it.

"She did... Don," Henry's voice got lower, and Don leaned in towards his desk, the receiver stuck to his ear. "This has been really tough on her."

"I know—"

"No, you don't. Look, I know you talk to her, but she lives here, and she's been behaving really strangely this last week."

"What do you mean, behaving strangely?" Don raised his voice. "Her mother's dying."

"Betty's been like this for months, she's actually a little better, trust me this is something else. She's been having night terrors. I wake up in the morning and I find her sitting in the living room staring at the ceiling, she says she can't sleep... And she's been cruel to the boys and to me, which is very unlike her."

"Does she want to come and stay with me, or do you want her to?"

Henry sighed, probably realising what he must've sounded like.

"She asked me. I think... She says she's been feeling off, that it's just stress and the whole college thing, but... I think she's realised she's scaring her brothers. She asked me not to tell you but... I thought you should know. You need to keep an eye on her."

"I will."

Don hung up the phone and stood from his desk. He breathed in deep for a few seconds, then looked towards his door.

"Meredith! Get Peggy in here."

Mere seconds later, Peggy knocked and walked in. She looked anxious.

"Close the door," he said, and she did. "Peggy I need you to stand in for me this afternoon at the meeting."

She nodded, though stayed still, expecting an explanation.

"What should I say?" she asked, when he was silent.

"Say I had a family emergency." He started putting his stuff away, then he raised his eyes towards Peggy again. "It's Sally. She's staying with me for a while, I have to pick her up."

"Oh," Peggy said, seemingly relieved.

"Don't mention that please."

"Of course not."

"Keep working on that board, I'll call you tonight and we can discuss it."

"Sure," she turned to leave, "Good luck, Don."

He tried to smile.

"Thanks."

/

The drive to Rye felt much shorter than he remembered, and he found himself doing a couple of laps of the block before finally stopping at the Francis home. He walked slowly to the front door and held his breath while he rang the bell. He knew Betty would be in the hospital at that time, but he was surprised at how much dread he felt at the prospect of seeing her. They talked on the phone, but seeing her… Seeing her would make it real.

"Hey, Dad."

Sally opened the door with her hand clutching a small suitcase, and she stepped out.

"I'm all set, you don't have to come in," she said, when he peered curiously inside.

"Isn't Henry…?"

"He's not in. He probably thought you would take a bit longer to get here. Aren't you working?"

Don frowned - there was something strange about the way she spoke to him. It almost felt like an accusation.

"I was, I left early." They both started walking towards the car. It was a second-hand Volkswagen, and his hair brushed against the ceiling, but he liked that Sally couldn't push herself to the far side like she'd done in the caddy. "I've got the rest of the day," he said, and started to drive away from the house. "Where do you want to have lunch?"

"Don't you have food at home?"

"I do, but I thought…"

"Just drop me in the apartment, I've got homework to do. You can go back to work."

Don stared. There had been a time when this sort of exchange would not have surprised him, but it hadn't been like that in a long time. He had made amends, and his relationship with Sally had been a priority ever since he came back. He didn't understand the spite in her voice.

"Sally… Is everything all right?" he asked. She scoffed.

"Of course it's not."

"You know what I mean."

"Since when do you care?"

Don braked hard and pulled over on the shoulder.

"Since you were born, Sally. What's going on? I thought —"

"What? That you could be nice to me for a couple of months and that would erase sixteen years of being a shitty dad?"

Don opened his mouth, just about to start shouting, but managed to stop himself. He had an urge to get out of the car, just walk away, but he forced himself to breathe for a moment, and then he silently pulled back into the road.

/

They climbed up the stairs to his apartment on the sixth floor, and Sally reached the door two full flights ahead of him. Once there she turned back towards him, with a playful smile that made him stop in his tracks.

"You're going to have to quit smoking it you ever want to beat me to the top," she said, and there was no trace of bitterness in her voice or in her face. He half smiled back at her, and tossed her the key.

"I've cut back. Down to two packs a week," he said, and made a point of remembering to throw away that half empty one he'd left in his nightstand.

"The doctor says cutting back is no good. He says it's all or nothing," Sally said. She was back to her usual tone, though, not berating, so he took her suitcase from her and led her inside.

"Well, one step at a time."

They ordered Chinese and ate from little boxes while perched in front of the TV, which Don knew was something Betty and Henry didn't usually allowed them to do - although who knows if that's changed now. He asked her about school and her plans for the future, but then shifted to more immediate subjects when she didn't seem comfortable with that.

"So how's everything with Pat?" he asked. She blushed, and he knew he'd hit gold.

"Good," she said. He smiled.

"Good?"

"Yeah. It's good. Did I…?" she frowned. "I've never told you about Pat."

"You haven't?"

"You know I haven't… I'm never telling Bobby anything again."

"Oh, come on," Don reached for her and teasingly pulled at her arm. "He let it slip, and I squeezed it out of him. So… am I ever going to meet this Pat?"

"No."

"Ever?"

"Dad, we're just going out."

"Has Henry met him?"

She squinted at him.

"Dad," she said, and he understood the warning. They had talked about these sort of comments before.

"Well, I'm happy if you're happy," he said, and noticed a slight deflating in her face as he did so. He grabbed her hand. "Is there something else going on?"

She immediately turned towards him and her frown deepened.

"Why?" she asked, and her tone from when he'd picked her up seemed to return. "What did Bobby say?"

Don took a deep breath.

"Bobby hasn't said anything, okay? Don't turn on him. I'm just… I don't know, you just seem a bit on edge."

"And do you really need to ask why that is?"

"Is that the only reason, Sally?"

She huffed, annoyed.

"Of course it is. You think it's not enough?"

"No. I don't."

"Then stop asking me about it."

She stood from the couch and left for her tiny room, closing the door behind her. Outside it was not yet dark. He stared at her door a while, searching a sound of her, or signs of movement, but everything was quiet. Sighing, he threw away the remaining boxes of fried noodles and he went for the phone to call Bobby and Gene. He thought of speaking to Henry as well, and asking for more details on Sally, but she was too close and the acoustics were terrible in that place.

When he went to his bedside to toss the cigarettes, he saved one and smoked it by the window.

/

He started shivering while he slept, and in a state of half-awareness he couldn't understand why he felt so cold. He pulled the duvet tight against him, but as his hands hugged the fabric he noticed beads of frost lining the edge of it. He pushed it away and opened his eyes, fully awake now, and saw the door to his room was open, the windows were open, the heating was off, and he could see the wind blowing in the curtains. It had snowed at some point, and there was a heap of it, lining the open window edges and starting to melt over the carpet.

He got out of bed with the duvet draped over his shoulders, and walked stiffly towards the living room.

"Sally?" he called, though he couldn't see her. He always left one light in the kitchen on but everything was dark now, and every window was open. There was ice covering the marble and tile of the kitchen area, and over the metal appliances. Beyond the living room, the door to Sally's room was open. "Sally!"

He stepped forwards and his bare feet slipped in melted snow, and he fell hard on his back. Huffing, he dropped the duvet and stood again, then he turned on the lights. He saw her then, beyond the door, in her bed, with no blanket over her. He rushed to her side and softly touched her shoulders, and was startled when she immediately opened her eyes.

"Dad?" Her voice was calm, and didn't sound sleepy, but she seemed to only just notice the cold. She wrapped her arms around her chest. "Why is it so cold?"

Don stepped back and started looking around him, fear creeping up his throat. He peered around the room and then retreated to the door.

"Stay here," he said, and closed it behind him. He finished turning all the lights on and strode around the apartment, looking behind every door and checking the locks. Nothing looked forced. Then she checked the windows, and the fire escape. Someone could've climbed up through the metal ladder and then grabbed on to the windows, but there was snow there, and no footprints. He closed everything and cranked up the heating before returning to Sally's room. She was under all her blankets now, peering up at him through the covers.

"What's going on?" she asked. Don looked at her closely.

"Nothing, I... I thought we had a break in, but it's okay."

"A break in? Did they take something?"

"No, no one was here. I was wrong... Did you open the windows?"

"No..." She seemed genuinely puzzled by the question.

"Oh... Okay. I'm sorry I woke you up."

He went back to his bedroom. It was still barely four in the morning, but he tossed and turned until the clock read five thirty and then he got up to shower and change. Sally was in Christmas break, and he didn't like the idea of her staying in the house alone all day, so maybe she'd agree to come with him to the office. Except it was no longer "his" office or "his" company, and Sally was no longer a little girl. She could work, though. Maybe she'd like to join in on the brainstorming for the day… He remembered then that he'd told Peggy he would call her and he hadn't. Damn it. He needed to stop doing that.

He got ready, but it was still dark outside. When he emerged into the living room, wrapping his tie around his neck, he flinched and nearly crashed against the wall when he bumped into Sally.

"Jesus," he hissed. "You scared me. What are you doing up?"

"What are you doing up?" she retorted. The coffee kettle was on and something looking like grilled cheese was starting to burn in the stove.

"I couldn't sleep," he said. "Made something for me?"

"There's coffee," she said, and scraped her sandwich off the skillet. He sat down in the kitchen table and poured himself a glass of milk. When he'd moved into the place the table had been in a tiny dining room area, but he had never gotten used to eating there and he'd dragged it inside the kitchen. Most days he ate alone, and eating alone in a dining room somehow made it a lot worse.

Sally sat down next to him and fiddled with her burnt sandwich, while Don finished the milk and poured coffee for the both of them. He expected her to ask him about the open windows first thing, but she didn't even look at the snow stains on the carpet.

"Any plans for today?" he asked. Sally shrugged.

"None of my friends are in the city," she said.

"Well," Don said. "You could stay here if that's what you want… Or you could come into work with me."

She rolled her eyes.

"Drawing and pestering your secretaries doesn't really appeal to me anymore."

"You could be an intern for a day. There's a bunch of them now, you know, only a couple of years older than you."

"Yeah but I'm sure none of their parents work there."

"You'd be surprised… Anyway, it was just an idea. It's not as if you're going to get paid."

Sally seemed to think about it for a moment, then she raised her eyes again.

"Can I intern with the art people?"

"Sure."

When they stood to go an hour later, Don noticed her sandwich still in her plate, untouched.

/

PEGGY

Thursday Morning, December 2, 1971

/

She was avoiding work, hiding out in Stan's office tossing a tennis ball into the wall — much to the annoyance of the office-dwellers on the other side — when there was a soft knock on the door. She attempted to stop the ball bouncing and it clattered into the desk, knocking papers down. Stan snickered.

"I told you they'd complain."

Peggy hid the ball inside a drawer, then stepped away from the door.

"Come in!" she said, and grabbed a few papers as if she'd just wrapped up a meeting. When Don peered inside she let them fall back to the desk.

"Peggy. What a surprise, finding you here…" he muttered, and Peggy blushed and went to get her folder and boards.

"We were just… throwing around some ideas on the Nabisco pitch…"

Don chuckled, and Peggy made a mental note not to keep justifying herself. She only reverted to her old ways with Don.

"It's okay. Actually I'm here for Stan."

Stan pushed his rolling chair so as to have a view of the door, just as Don opened it more and a smartly dressed young woman came into view.

"Sally, you remember Peggy," he said. Sally, older, wiser, taller Sally, came into the office and shook Peggy's hand, then Stan's. Peggy couldn't help it but stare a bit. God. She felt old. "Stan, she's here to help you today. Get her tracing paper or... whatever it is you do."

"Sure thing," Stan said. Don waved goodbye, and closed the door behind him. Peggy grabbed her things and followed him.

"Don."

He turned immediately, as if he'd expected this.

"I'm sorry, I forgot to call. How did it go, yesterday?"

"The meeting was fine, nothing important really. I do need you to sign on the boards today."

He nodded.

"Get the team, and see me in half an hour. We'll get it done."

"Okay."

He turned to leave, then stopped. He made a gesture towards Stan's door.

"Could you check on her? From time to time?" he said, lowering his voice. Peggy smiled.

"I'm pretty sure she's past needing a sitter, Don."

"No, not like that, just…" he shook his head. "Never mind."

Peggy frowned, but didn't get a chance to ask again before he walked away. She returned to Stan's office and found him showing Sally a timeline of the evolution of print ads from the early 1960s through the start of 1971.

"Have you heard of photo editing?" she heard him say, and smiled.

She had the meeting with Don and the team and then spent the rest of the morning working on getting down the results of that meeting into new storyboards. Stan had Sally trace and clean up his sketches, then set up the boards for the second meeting. When Don came to fetch her for lunch he found her down in the studio, looking through the camera lenses at the elaborate set up of a ham in a dinner table.

"Does it ever get weird?" Sally asked her, when she returned to Stan's office. Stan had left for a meeting, and she was using his illustrator's table to do a mind-map. Her own office was bigger than Stan's, who shared his with another illustrator, currently on sick leave, and it had the benefit of windows, but Stan's was tucked away in a corner away from foot traffic. It was easier for her to concentrate there. That day, taking advantage of the sick coworker, she even had her secretary rerouting her calls there.

"What gets weird?" she asked, feigning ignorance. Sally cast her a knowing glance.

"You and Stan. I heard some companies don't even allow it."

Peggy smiled.

"We're in separate departments. We don't compete with each other."

"And does everyone know?"

"I guess they do," she said, shrugging. "Those who care anyway, I mean, I've been here almost a year and I don't know half of the people in this company. It's huge."

Sally went back to ordering the set of printed images Stan had left her, setting aside those she thought made the best ten. In the corner of her eye Peggy saw her approach the projector, which had been set up in the corner of the other artist's desk — then she recoiled as though she'd been struck.

"Sally? Are you okay?"

Sally retreated from the projector, tightening her hand to her chest.

"That thing buzzed me."

"Buzzed you? Like electricity?" Peggy bent down, searching for the cable, but it was tucked away behind the furniture, out of sight. She stood to have a closer look but saw all the lights were off. She stretched a hand towards it.

"No, don't!" Sally said, and Peggy pulled her hand back.

"But it's not turned on…"

"Don't touch it."

"There are no lights on, it means it's…" Peggy hesitantly pushed the button to turn it on, and it whirred to life. She then lay a hand over it, timidly, then touching every part of it. She felt nothing. She turned to Sally, who was watching her with her eyes wide in horror. "Maybe it was a static spark."

"No, it wasn't like that." She still had her hand tucked against her chest, and she almost looked as if she could cry.

"Are you hurt?" Peggy asked, but Sally didn't volunteer her arm for inspection. She seemed to breathe in deep a few times, then she shook her head and sat down with her photos again.

"No," she said. "I'm fine. It just…" she paused, breathed again. "Maybe it wasn't a buzz. I… I don't know the word."

"I'll turn if off."

When Peggy brushed past her, and pressed the button again, she was pretty sure she saw Sally flinch, and later she caught her giving the machine odd looks. However the next time she spoke, she got into a long talk with Stan over photo manipulation and design, and her hand returned to its normal position. After Don came for her in the early evening, though, she asked Stan to unplug the projector.

/

DON

/

"Stan said you were pretty good today. A quick learner," Don told Sally on the drive back home. Sally leaned against the window of the car, and seemed not to have heard him. "Sally?"

She turned.

"What?"

"So, how was it? Did you like the art department? Do you want to try with copywriting tomorrow?"

"Why does every conversation I have with an adult has to be about what I'll do? Is it the only thing they can think of?"

Don sighed.

"I wasn't asking about the future. I was just wondering about tomorrow."

"Well, I don't want to decide yet."

"That's okay, you don't have to."

Sally reached for the car radio, and started pressing the lowering the volume button until no music sounded.

"What Stan does seems more interesting than what Peggy does," she said, then.

"You do know that what Peggy does is what I do, right?"

"Yes, I know.

She pressed the lower volume button again.

"It's already off, Sally."

She stopped, and sat over both her hands and started biting her lower lip. Don slowed down a little.

"You know," he said. "You don't have to go to work with me. You can stay home. Or go back to Henry's, if that's what you want."

"It's not," she snapped. "I don't need you to number my choices, I know what they are."

"Hey." His voice became serious, and rose in volume, but Sally just looked away.

They reached the apartment, and started up the stairs. Don made a mock attempt at a race, but this time Sally lagged behind, and when he tossed her the key she didn't catch it.

"I'm tired, Dad. I'm going to bed."

Don frowned.

"Before dinner?"

"I'm not hungry."

She walked dragging her feet, and went inside her room and closed the door while Don still stood by the main entrance. The couple of times he had spotted her in the office, and at lunch, she had seemed chipper and enthusiastic, but that was all gone now. He settled down to call the boys, and then once he had spoken to them he lingered a little on the call with Henry. He thought, as he waited for him to pick up, if that was how things were going to be like, after Betty. The two of them, the step father and the shitty dad, talking about kids neither had actually raised.

"Did she ever sleepwalk?" he asked Henry, the moment he heard him back on the phone. Henry took a moment to reply and Don heard movement, as though he were walking to a more private location. Neither was very comfortable with the conversation, but it was one they needed to have.

"Not that I saw," he said. "Has she, with you?"

"No… I don't know. I think she might be. I woke up today and all the windows were open, but she said she didn't do it."

"I've seen her up at night," Henry said, "but if she was sleepwalking she didn't look like it. Has she been okay today? Betty's asked if she could come see her, tomorrow or the day after."

"Today was fine. I'll talk to her in the morning."

He hung up, and stopped for a moment by the cabinet where he'd kept his booze. If he went down now, he could still catch the closest store before closure and get a bottle. He looked up again towards Sally's door, and shook his head. After dinner, he dragged his duvet and pillows to the living room and slept in the couch, with his head closest to her room.

/

In the morning, when he opened his eyes, he found the TV already on in mute, and Sally sitting on the far edge of the couch with his headphones on.

"What are you doing?" he asked her, dragging his feet down to the floor. She turned towards him and removed the headphones.

"Just trying them out," she said.

"Were you listening to anything?"

She shrugged, and stood and went for the kitchen. She was already dressed, Don noticed, and the rims of her eyes were reddened, as if she had been staring at something bright for two long. He turned off the TV and picked up the headphones. The cable was loose and unattached, and there was no record placed on the player.

"Want some eggs?" he asked her. In the kitchen counter he found a box of cereal, completely empty. The coffee machine was untouched.

"No, thank you. I already had something."

"How about coffee?"

"I don't like coffee."

"You had some yesterday."

She shrugged again. Don kept watching her as he fried an egg for himself, then when he sat down in front of her he noticed she kept touching her ears, like she'd just gotten out of a swimming pool and had water stuck there. While he ate, she folded a napkin in half over and over again.

"I spoke to Henry yesterday," he said, but even then she did not raise her eyes. "He says your mother's up for a visit, today or tomorrow. Do you want me to drive you there?"

She looked up then, eyes looking even redder.

"Is that all he said?" she asked. Don wondered if she had overheard them, but he'd made a point of keeping his voice very low, and her door had been closed.

"Yes," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"Did he say why?"

"No, but he did mention she was feeling better."

Sally scoffed.

"That's such bullshit."

"Sally!"

"It is. You know it is. She didn't even want me to see her get sick."

Betty had been ill for almost a year, but she had only recently started staying over night in the hospital. Don had been proud of how Sally had handled everything, and he had known it was hard on her but she'd never once complained or wallowed in self-pity as he was sometimes wont to do. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be where he was now without her, and though things were hardly perfect, or even close to it, she hadn't been this hostile since before he left for California. This seemed too sudden for it just to be about Betty.

"She just doesn't want to put you through that," he said. Sally rolled her eyes.

"Well it's not as if it won't happen if I don't see it. It doesn't stop being real."

"I know that."

"Just because you don't talk about it doesn't mean I stop thinking about it."

"I know…"

"She could already be dead and buried for all I know."

"She's not dead, Sally," Don stood from the table. "Look, I'll get changed, and we can go see her right now."

Sally turned away.

"No."

"Then tomorrow I can drop you off so you can go with Henry…"

"Didn't you hear me? I said no. I don't want to go."

Don gritted his teeth, and finished his egg and coffee in silence. He wasn't sure if that meant she was staying with him, going back to work with him, or just doing her own thing, but he found himself afraid to ask. Every time he asked her something she seemed to get more agitated, and there was a brittle quality about her that reminded him of Midge, of that time they'd met in the ground floor of the Time Life building and she'd tricked him into her opium den. He shook his head to try to rid himself of that image.

Then, when he was leaving his dishes in the sink, hat already in hand, she spoke again, still from the table.

"When was the last time you spoke to her?" she asked, and for half a second Don thought of Midge instead of Betty.

"Uh… it was a couple of weeks ago," he said.

"And did she sound better?"

He thought about lying, but somehow he was sure she'd know.

"No. She didn't."

Sally's eyes seemed to bulge, and her voice sounded off.

"Then how do you know she's not dead?"

/

PEGGY

Friday Morning, December 3, 1971

/

She had watched the preliminary cut for the new Oreo ad so many times she knew every frame of it, but the cast still didn't seem right to her. The parents were okay, but the kids just didn't strike her as authentic, and they kept glancing at the camera in odd moments. The senior TV guy would pop a vein if she were to ask to redo the shoot, though. He already seemed to hate her.

When she arrived in her office her phone had just started to ring. In her desk by the secretaries pool, the girls were busy going through an Avon catalogue.

"It's okay, I'll get it," she muttered, though no one was actually listening. On her desk was a cup of coffee and a little note on coloured paper from Stan. 'Long lunch today?' She smiled, and saved it in a box in her first drawer before picking up the phone.

"Peggy Olson's office."

"Sally's on her way to you right now," Don said on the other line, and Peggy bit her tongue.

"Don… I'm actually pretty busy today."

"I know. Just give her something at the bottom of your list, let her work at it."

"Stan has some stuff she could do…"

"Peggy, I'll owe you. She's uh…" There was a change in his tone, making Peggy frown. "She hasn't been herself."

"Don, it's always a weird time, leaving school and all those decisions…"

"No. That's not it. Please, just keep her busy, and call me if there's anything off."

"Off? What do you mean—"

"Thanks Peggy."

He hung up, and Peggy put back the receiver just as it started to buzz again.

"Miss Sally Draper here to see you," her secretary announced.

"Come in!" she called. Sally opened the door and stepped inside.

"Wow, your place is a lot bigger than Stan's…" she muttered, coming closer to the windows. She seemed to be exactly as she'd been the day before, only she looked as though she had not slept much. Still, that did not strike Peggy as odd for a girl her age.

"You can sit down over there in that desk," she told her, pointing towards the little table where she usually did some brainstorming with the team. From her bottom desk drawer she fished out a folder of background research on a small brand of sunglasses - the lowest in her list of priorities. "You use sunglasses, Sally?"

"Sure," Sally said.

"Okay, great. This is the research for a new brand. Look it over, make note of the main points, and when you're done we can bounce off some ideas for it."

"Okay."

Sally didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about it, but she got right into it without a word and Peggy returned to her Nabisco notes. All through the morning she heard Sally's pen scratching the pages of her notebook, and she was surprised at how satisfying it was to watch her work. She didn't speak or stand or fiddle with anything, but when Peggy went to get coffee, she returned to find her stepping back from the radio under the windowsill, as though she'd been trying to turn it on.

"Should I put music on?" Peggy asked her, and Sally looked back at the radio a moment with widened eyes, before sitting down again.

"No, it's okay."

By the end of the morning, when Stan popped in for lunch, Sally was still wrapped in scribbling notes in a small pad while staring at the charts in the folder.

"What is that?" Stan asked her. Sally raised her eyes towards him.

"Sunnies Sunglasses market research."

"Sounds fun."

"Yeah."

They both chuckled, and Sally found herself feeling strangely annoyed at this exchange. Stan then looked up at her, his coat on his shoulder.

"Should we get going?" he said.

"Sure," Peggy said, then she turned towards Sally. "You dad's waiting for you in his office."

Sally left her notes, and Stan opened the door for her. Peggy followed, but Stan seemed to hang a little longer inside, looking down at the little table. Peggy went back for him.

"What is it?" she asked. Stan picked up Sally's notebook, and started flicking through the pages. Peggy could not read it from where she stood, but saw pages upon pages of neat but tightly scribbled notes, constantly overlapping each other. The pen had been pushed so hard and so many times into the pages that they were broken in parts. She felt her face freezing up at the sight of it.

"Jesus," Stan said, in a hushed voice.

"Can you read what it says?"

Stan kept on flicking, then stopped at a clearer page.

"'Sunglasses protect your eyes from the sun. You see the sun through the glass but you shouldn't look at the sun because of blindness. If I look at the sun without sunglasses I see nothing. Seeing nothing is like seeing everything all at once, which is like not seeing at all. If there is no light on in a room I see nothing if there are no lights on no one can see me. If I can't be seen then I can't be heard. I put the sound back in the room. If I am silent then I am also invisible, I am invisible if it's too loud. If I turn off the sound to zero then the sound diminishes, but does not—"

"Stop," Peggy said. She could still hear Ginsberg's senseless rambling in her head, and her lips shook in panic. She took the notebook from him and closed it, then went back to her desk and picked up the phone.

"What are you doing?" he asked. She started dialing.

"I need to tell Don."

"What if she's pranking us?"

Peggy paused, then shook her head.

"She's not. Don was saying this morning that she had not been herself, and yesterday…"

"She was totally normal yesterday."

"Mostly yes, but… There was a moment while you were out. She touched the projector and said it had buzzed her. But it wasn't even on."

"Maybe it was static."

"I told her that, but she said it was different. She seemed really upset about it…"

The phone rang on the other end, but at the fourth tone Don's secretary picked up.

"He's out for the day," she said. Peggy hung up.

"Shit. He's gone. Should I call him at home?"

"He's probably not there yet. If that's where he's going."

"Oh my God. Then what do I do?" She started pacing around the room, coat still on. "Do I go to his apartment? What if she opens the door? What if he's not even there?"

Stan followed her and stopped her, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"You don't know if there's anything wrong. She could've just been bored to death with the research you gave her, maybe she was doodling…"

"Stan, no. That is not what this is, just… just look at this!" She started flicking through the pages, scratched out words jumping out and tearing through the paper, whole pages filled with repeating sentences. Stan lowered his head and sat down.

"But she seemed so normal," he said, rubbing his eyes. Peggy did not sit again.

"We need to show this to Don. I think he already suspected something." She lifted her phone again and called Don's secretary again. "Meredith, did he say where he was going? This is very important."

"I'm sorry, he-"

"Say it's life of death," Stan said.

"It's life or death, Meredith. "

"He just said he'd see me on Monday."

"He didn't have anything scheduled? Did he get any calls just before leaving, did you hear him say anything?"

"No, I'm sorry. He was with his daughter. I think…"

"What?"

"I think she might've mentioned Mrs. Francis, but I don't know the context. Is everything—?"

"Thank you Meredith. If he calls, tell him he needs to contact me immediately."

She stared at Stan for a moment, hoping he'd volunteer some line of action she hadn't thought about, but he was still sitting down looking at Sally's notes.

"Should we go to his house?" she said. Stan shook his head.

"I think we should wait till he comes back."

"But he's not going to come back, it's Friday, we won't see him until Monday."

"I know, but… Is it really that urgent? If they're talking about his ex, then maybe they've got other more serious things to deal with this weekend."

Peggy shook her head, but knew she had to consider that possibility. She steadied her breathing, and left her coat back in her seat.

"I'll call his house after lunch," she said. Stan nodded.

"Let's do that. Now, let's get something to eat."

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Do tell me what you think. More added soon.**


	2. Chapter 2

/

DON

/

He wrapped up a meeting, and headed for his office just before one.

"Sally's inside, Mr. Draper," Meredith told him as he approached, and he smiled but paused the moment his hand touched the door knob. He could hear a voice inside, Sally's voice, and there was a high-pitched ring to it that made the hair rise in the back of his neck. He slowly turned the knob, just enough so more sound leaked through, and he stuck his ears against the frame.

"…not going to be okay. It's happening again, Pat… I… I can't help it. No, it's like… Like music now. Like violins, almost. I… I don't know how to say it. I think… I think they're lying to me. I don't know if my dad's in it but I know they're not saying—"

Don finished opening the door, his hands shaking.

"Sally?"

She immediately hung up the phone and stepped away from the desk, and her face made an eerie shift from almost teary to stone cold. The record player, Don immediately noticed, had been covered over with Sally's coat, and all the records were gone.

"Who were you talking to?" he asked.

"A friend."

Don stepped closer towards her, and shut the door.

"Pat?"

"If you already know, then why do you ask me?" she raised her voice. Don squeezed his hands shut.

"What's going on with you?"

She didn't look at him.

"Nothing."

"It's not nothing. You were not telling that boy 'nothing'. Tell me."

"Or what?"

She grabbed back her coat and her purse, and headed for the door, but Don stopped her.

"Sally, look at me."

"Let go."

"Sally—"

"Let. Go."

She said in a way that made her think she was about to start screaming at the top of her lungs, so he moved out of the way. She remained fixed in her spot for a few moments more.

"I've changed my mind. I want to go and see mom."

Don took a deep breath, and reached for his hat and keys.

"Okay," he said. "We can do that. "

/

The second they stepped into the car, Sally started pressing the dials in the car radio, which was already turned off. Don watched her with a sickening feeling in his stomach but remained quiet, though his hands gripped the wheel so tightly he could see he was leaving marks with his fingernails.

"We'll—We will stop at the apartment first. I left my checkbook there and I need to stop at the bank." And to call Henry, without her knowing. Somehow. As he spoke he glanced to his side, and imagined she could see right through his lie. "Do you want to grab your stuff or…?"

"Why?" Her voice, now uninhibited by the fact she was in his office, sounded louder and combative. "Are you kicking me out, too?"

"No, I just thought… Sally, Henry didn't kick you out."

"Yeah. That's what you think."

Don frowned.

"He said you wanted to come over. He said you'd asked him to."

"Well, he's a liar." Again she reached for the radio, then seemed to catch herself. "He's a liar, and you're going to find out soon enough."

"What the hell does that mean?" He tried to stop himself from shouting, but couldn't do it. Sally looked away from him, then fixed her eyes on her window.

"Betty's dead, Dad."

"That is just ridiculous."

"It's true. She's been dead a while. You'll see for yourself today."

Don started breathing fast, and he struggled to keep his eyes on the road. A more rational part of him told him he shouldn't engage, he should just try to keep things calm, but that part of him was not in control.

"Why would you say that? Why would you even say that, Sally?"

"You all just want to keep me in the dark so that you can go on with your lives without me."

"What?"

Sally seemed to react to his voice now, and she made herself small in her seat and kept staring at the window. Don reached his building and parked the car with a hard brake.

"Sally… Sally!"

But she did not reply nor turn to look at him, and he got out and opened her door.

"Come on," he said. She kept quiet and did not move. "Sally, get out."

"No," she said. "I'm not setting foot in this building again."

"Well, suit yourself," he said. He strutted up to the ground floor, intent on using the doorman's phone, but halfway up he was struck with a strange fear and he ran back down. She hadn't moved. He'd talk to Henry later, and as far as he remembered they didn't need an appointment for the hospital. He got back into the car, back into the road, and headed out of the city.

/

Betty's hospital was actually a hospice, but Don hated that word almost as much as she did, and they never called it that. She could've been able to hire a nurse for at-home care, but Betty had insisted on not staying there, knowing that the kids would be constantly around her. She had visits now, which didn't last that long when she wasn't feeling that well, and when it was really bad she could keep everyone but Henry from seeing her. Don understood the arrangement, sometimes even better than Henry did. She was helping them all to move on.

He tried a couple of times to start a conversation again, but he couldn't really fake calmness in his voice, and she never even turned to look at him. He found himself making plans to stop and get a drink, maybe leave her at the hospital for a while and head down the road, maybe stop at a shop before and say he was getting cigarettes… He searched for his pack in his jacket pocket and found it wasn't there, and he started to feel sweat soaking through his shirt.

"Stop that," Sally said suddenly. Don turned.

"What?"

"Stop it!"

She still wasn't looking at him, but she started to claw desperately at the radio.

"Stop what? Sally? Stop what!"

"You're humming."

"No, I'm not."

She covered her ears with her hands and started groaning.

"Make it stop!" She leaned back and started kicking at the dashboard.

"Sally, don't do that."

Don slowed down, and tried to hold her with one arm, but she kept at it. Her face contorted and all of a sudden she was sobbing, hitting the window with her hands and crying, completely hysterical.

"Sally, you need to calm down. Calm down." He tried turning right to stop at the shoulder, but he was in the highway now, and there were trucks coming behind him on both sides. "Everything… Everything's fine, your mom… she's waiting for you…" She didn't stop, and he didn't know what to say.

"I need to get out of here," she said, abruptly stopping her thrashing. "I need to get out…"

"Sally—"

"I need to get—"

"No, don't—" Don saw her lift up the lock and open the door, and he threw himself to her side, grabbing on to her as tightly as he could. He felt the car swerve on its own while he still held her, and then heard the skidding breaks of another vehicle. He closed his eyes, heard the impact, but felt nothing at all.

/

PEGGY

/

They took the subway together after work, uptown towards her apartment, and Stan stopped before getting there to get some groceries to fill her fridge. He'd taken to staying with her most of the week, and he always made a point of filling up on groceries even though she always said it wasn't necessary. He had announced he was making paninis that day (as if that was a huge culinary achievement, but she couldn't complain) and he emerged from the store with a bagful of still-warm ciabatta bread.

"Just look at these beauties," he said. Peggy smiled.

"Halfway to a panini already."

"Oh, you faithless woman. You are about to have your mind blown."

They chuckled, and walked up to her floor, but when they settled down and Peggy dropped her bag in her couch, Sally's notebook slipped out and she started feeling uneasy again. Stan carried on cutting up cheese and salami for the sandwiches, the grill was on and it smelled delicious, but it all didn't feel right to her, staying there. Her calls to Don's house all through the afternoon had gone unanswered, and insistence with Meredith had revealed there had been some sort of discussion between Don and Sally when they left. She had made the decision not to go there, to wait it out, but she was regretting that now.

"I don't think I'll be able to sleep," she said, after they had eaten. They stretched out in her couch with the TV on but she stared past it, thinking of Sally getting buzzed by the projector. Stan seemed about to try a joke, but then he appeared to understand what she was talking about.

"Peggy, he's clearly not home. What good will it do for you to go there?"

"I don't know, I just… I just need to make sure."

"Peggy..."

"If she does something, I don't think I could live with myself."

"Do you really think she'd..." Stan trailed off. Peggy slowly pulled away from his arms, and went to get her things.

"I can't, Stan. I can't just stay here."

"What will you do? He's not home!"

"Then I'll ask his doorman. His neighbors, someone! I can't just let the whole weekend pass." She opened the door and stood outside. "Are you coming with me or not?"

He sighed.

"Oh dear. Yes. Yes, I am."

She nodded in agreement, and started downstairs.

"Do you know where he lives?" Stan asked, following her. Peggy didn't turn.

"Yep."

"And may I ask how you know that?"

"Nope."

"Peggy!"

"We met there when he came back. Before he started working again. I helped him out on getting the Coke thing on paper." She was aware of the pride in her voice as she said that.

"Really?"

"Yes."

She had also helped him get rid of every bottle of liqueur and set up his recovery goals somewhere along the process, but there was no need to mention that.

"How come you didn't tell me?"

They made it to the ground floor, and Stan hailed a cab. Peggy got in first.

"He asked me not to. I respected that."

"But you're telling me now."

"Yes. I am."

Peggy told the cabbie the address, and they headed downtown. Don's new apartment was quite far from the upper East side, and it was a whole lot smaller and older than the one Stan and Peggy had been to for that party, what seemed like ages ago now. Still, it had a doorman.

"He's really stepped down, though," Stan muttered, when they walked in. "It's a walk-up. And not a second floor."

"It's still very nice…"

"Everywhere is nice compared to your place... You would've imagined Draper still had enough though, have you seen the car he drives now? It's like he's trying too hard to be modest."

"Well, he's twice divorced and with three kids in private school."

"I heard Megan got a big cut..."

"Shhh."

They approached the doorman, and Peggy stepped forward to talk first.

"Hi, I'm Peggy Olson, for Mr. Draper?"

She had seen the man before, but it had been a while, and he didn't recognise her.

"I'm sorry," he said. "He's not in."

"Well, listen..." She read his name tag. "Listen, Victor. It is really, really important that I speak with him. I've been trying to call him all day. It's an emergency—"

"Life or death," Stan added.

"Yes, life or death. So is there anything you know about where he might be right now?"

The door man shuffled, uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry, ma'am... I can't really..."

"I know you're not supposed to say. But Victor, you've seen me here before, haven't you? You know we're friends. Please, anything..."

Stan rested his hand on the reception desk, a roll of bills visible inside it.

"Anything at all," he added. The man stared at him, and then at Peggy, and she imagined her distraught looks and messy hair helped sway him, because then he pushed Sean's hand away and looked at her.

"They came around two in the afternoon. Parked the car but didn't come out, then drove out again five minutes later."

"And they haven't been back? Since two?"

"Peggy, maybe it's... What was going to happen," Stan said. Peggy turned back to the doorman.

"Do you have any other contact number for him? Or for the kids?"

"No. I'm sorry."

Peggy stepped back and pushed her hair away from her face.

"Shit. Shit!"

"Ma'am?"

"Peggy, let's just go."

Peggy started following Stan, then returned to the doorman.

"If he comes back or calls, tell him to call me back. Say it's urgent, and that it's about Sally."

The man frowned at that.

"About Sally?"

"Yes. Remember that!"

She opened her purse, rummaged through her things, and found a pen and one of her cards She wrote her home number and message there, and gave it to the man.

"From Peggy Olson," she stressed, then followed Stan out the door.

Outside it had started to snow again, and a few cabs passed by them without stopping. A cold snap was coming, according to the news, and Peggy stuffed her hands in her pockets and shivered, looking around the half empty streets.

"Do you think…?" she turned towards Stan. "Do you think Meredith has his ex wife's number?"

Stan sighed.

"Do you even have Meredith's number?"

"I do, actually."

"Come on. You have to let it go. She's probably asleep by now, anyway. "

Peggy looked at her watch - it was already almost midnight. She leaned in towards Stan to keep warm while he kept trying to flag down a cab.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just think about Mike. I knew something was off, but I didn't say anything."

"You couldn't have known."

"But I know now."

"You've exhausted all options. We can try again tomorrow, but I don't think it will make that much of a difference. She's not alone, she'll be okay."

Peggy nodded, and really tried to believe that, but still felt sure that there would be no sleeping for her that night. Stan tightened his arms around her, and then practically jumped into the street to stop a cab. The weather was getting worse and it took a while for them to get back to her place, but they didn't speak on the way there. When they finally stopped beneath the building, Peggy opened the door but Stan remained inside.

"I'm think I'm going to head home," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I… I need to catch up on sleep and get some laundry done. It's been a long week. I'll come by for breakfast tomorrow," he said, and they kissed goodbye. "A late breakfast."

She smiled.

"Okay. Thank you, Stan."

"Got nothing to thank me for. Except those paninis."

"They were amazing."

"Of course they were. And go to sleep, please, stop working yourself up. Everything's fine."

"Okay."

She closed the door, and waved goodbye as he was leaving. She was smiling for a while as she climbed her way up to her apartment, but the anguish was back the moment she walked in. She got into the shower, hoping to clear her mind a bit, but halfway through her washing her hair the phone rang, and she let out a scream.

"What's going on?" she heard one of his neighbours call, through the walls. "A rat, again?"

"It's nothing!" she called out. Why was she so on edge? It was probably just Stan, checking up on her before sleeping. She washed the suds out of her hair and got out, dripping all over the floor, and picked up the phone on its fifth ring. "Hello?"

"Where the hell were you? I've been calling for hours." The voice was rough and distant, but still recognisable.

"Don? I've been trying—"

"I need you to come to St. Peter's hospital, right away."

"Don, there's something—"

"I can pay for the fare, just get in a cab right now."

"Are you okay?"

"No."

He hung up.

Peggy kept the phone stuck to her ear, her mind racing, for at least a minute before she stood again, still wrapped in a towel with her hair dripping wet. Immediately she started playing worst case scenarios in her mind, and she had to stop herself in order to focus and remember what she had to do. She had to leave right away… But should she call Stan first? Should she tell him all of it, half of it? Should she ask him to come with her? No, she could handle it. She could call him first thing in the morning, once she knew more. Yes. That would work.

She went for her phonebook, and looked up St. Peter's hospital. It was way up in the Connecticut border - she would have to pay a double fare, or at least Don would have to. She tore the page, changed into the first jumper and pants she found, grabbed her bag and winter coat, and raced downstairs.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Anybody out there?**


	3. Chapter 3

/

DON

Friday Night, December 3, 1971

/

He opened his eyes and immediately squeezed his hands over loose blankets and tried to get up. His vision was initially blurry but then it cleared up, and he saw a nurse leaning over him and a bunch of people moving around in the background. He had a brace on his neck and when he tried to turn he felt pain there, as though he'd slept crooked, and someone held him down when he tried to slide off the bed.

"Sir, please stay down."

It took him a moment to understand where he was and why, and then he felt as though his hands still remembered holding on to Sally.

"Where's my daughter?" he asked, and had to lift his head to look around with the brace on. The movement made him dizzy, and he felt like he was going to be sick. On cue, the nurse pressed a pan under his chin just before he threw up. Then he tried again. "My daughter? She was in the car with me…"

"I will fetch the attending," she said, and left with the pan. What felt like a long time later - though it probably wasn't - a young doctor came towards him. There were many beds and other people around them, but non of them visible through the curtains appeared to be Sally. He imagined the worst and saw black for a moment.

"Where's—"

"Sir, your daughter's fine," the doctor said. Don rested back against the bed and blinked a few times. When he spoke next, he managed to keep his voice calm and low.

"Where is she?"

"She got some sutures, from a cut in her arm, but she'll be okay. She was lucky, there seems to have been no further damage."

"But WHERE is she?"

"She's in a bed in the maternity ward. There were no free beds here. She was very agitated when she came in, but the pain meds helped with that, so she's probably asleep by now."

"'Probably'? So you don't know? Can I see her? I…" he tried to sit up again, but failed. He noticed then he had another, larger brace — or a splint, that seemed more likely — wrapped around his leg, and though he tried he could not move it. He cursed, and grabbed on to the brace in his neck. "What is this?"

The doctor spoke for a long time after that question, but Don only heard bits and pieces of it. He still had his watch on, and when he lifted his hand towards his face to look at it he was shocked it see it was almost eleven pm. He'd left the office at what, one thirty? He didn't drive for that long, either. He tried to shift in the stiff bed but he was starting to feel pain in odd places, and his head was now pulsing, like a hammer was hitting him between his eyes. He looked away from the speaking doctor until it was all quiet again.

"I need to call someone," he said. The doctor nodded.

"Sure. We've been waiting for you to be conscious enough in order to get a number to notify next of kin, your daughter said her mother was not available. The head nurse will write it down and get in touch with whomever you specify."

"No, I need… I need to make that call."

"I'm sorry —"

"Can't I get a phone here?"

"I don't think that's possible, no."

"Well, could you at least ask?"

He grabbed on to the railing of the bed with one hand, and looked for the straps in his neck brace, but a nurse held him back before he could succeed in taking it off.

"Sir, please it needs to stay on."

They had told him why, but he hadn't listened or maybe he had and didn't remember. He felt a crushing pressure in his chest but couldn't manage to sit up or even cough.

"Could you at least ask?" he repeated, and saw the doctor nod again and hoped he meant it. He turned away to speak to a nurse, then left to see to the next patient.

Later - minutes, or maybe hours, he couldn't be sure - they asked him if he knew his name and phone number, if he knew who the president was and could do simple math. He had a faint memory of already having answered those questions, and considered refusing, but the sight of more severely injured people being constantly wheeled in made him bide his tongue. It was a busy night, and being difficult wasn't going to get him anywhere.

They showed him X-rays, then asked him to turn his neck from side to side, which he did, but the brace was not removed. When they asked about how he felt in a scale from one to ten, he lied and said there was no pain.

"So, that would be one?" the nurse said. He looked away, and she just shook her head in disapproval.

"Do you know if my daughter's awake?" he asked.

"Let me check on that for you."

She left, and did not immediately return. He hadn't thought it was possible for him to fall asleep but his eyes started to droop soon after, and he was startled awake by something hard being dropped on the bed. He opened his eyes and saw a phone being stretched from behind the curtains, which were now closed. The nurse held up the receiver for him, and when he took it she leaned in the phone so he could see the dials.

His first instinct was to call Henry. Sally had made him anxious, and he felt a strange need to ask him to put Betty on the phone, and hear her voice, but how could he tell her about this? They would both immediately assume he was drunk, and Betty had too much to deal with already, he couldn't tell her what had really happened. He was sure that if he just spoke to Henry, he could keep it quiet, but Betty would be able to see it in his face, she would know if he suddenly had to leave, and in any case it didn't bode well for the future if he even suspected he had caused the crash.

He paused and chose another number, and made a call to Peggy that went straight to voicemail.

"Shit."

The nursed looked down at him.

"I can't keep the phone here for long."

"Just let me try again. "

He tried three more times, then even tried Roger's number also to no avail, before someone almost tripped over the wire, and the curtain was pulled open. The nurse he'd asked to check on Sally returned to his side.

"She's back in observation in the ER. Her chart says she had an abnormal blood pressure reading."

"What?"

"Don't worry, she's probably been…"

"When did she even leave the ER? Isn't this the ER?"

The other nurse started placing the receiver back on the phone and carrying it a way, but Don grabbed hold of the cable.

"Wait! Just one more try."

The nurses looked at each other a moment, then one nodded. The phone was left back in the bed, and this time Peggy picked up.

/

PEGGY

Friday Night, December 3, 1971

/

The cab stopped outside the main entrance to the hospital, but it was a long walk from the road to the doors, and by the time she walked in her still-wet hair had frozen solid. She shook the snow off her feet just past the double doors and then emerged into a deserted reception, where a single nurse sat behind a desk. Peggy wasn't sure if she should ask for Don or for Sally, or if she'd need to prove some sort of family connection, so she just asked to be pointed towards the emergency ward.

"Straight and to the left."

The reception had been quiet and ghost-like, but to the left, past sliding doors, she found a full waiting room, where people were pacing anxiously or talking amongst themselves. Don, however, wasn't there. She kept going, then at the following door she was stopped briefly before being allowed through a hallway already brimming with patients in cots placed against the walls. It was the weather, she imagined. The black ice. A couple of times on her way there she had squeezed at her seat, thinking they were about to slip, and she thought she could've easily wound up there as well.

She tightened her hands as she passed by the people in cots, not looking at them in the eyes and doing her best not to think about the last time she'd been in a place like this.

"Peggy?"

She wheeled around, and saw Don peering out at her from behind a half drawn curtain. She had expected to see him waiting somewhere, had imagined that it would be Sally in one of the beds, and would've walked past him if he hadn't called out.

"Oh my God."

He had a leg splinted up and raised from the bed, and a neck collar lay beside him, clearly recently removed. He had small cuts covering the left side of his face, and his left eye and lip were black and swollen. The same sort of cuts, caused by glass she guessed, covered his hands.

"I'm all right," he said, noticing how she looked him over. His voice was strangely grave, though. She wasn't there this time to borrow him money or bail him out.

"What happened?"

"It was… The ice. I lost control of the car," he said.

She bit her tongue, hard, before speaking again.

"And Sally?"

His jaw tightened.

"They said she was in observation, but they're not letting me go there. I need you to see where she is, find out what's happening."

"Don, I…"

"Look, Peggy, I wouldn't have called if I'd had a choice. Betty can't know about this. I've told them you're her aunt, so they'll let you through."

"Don, listen—"

"Please, they won't let me see if—"

"Listen to me, Don!" He closed his mouth and looked at her. She breathed in deep before talking next. "I've been trying to reach you since lunch. I think there's something going on with Sally. "

She half expected him to brush her off, to tell her to focus on what was actually happening right now and leave her ridiculous theories for later, but he didn't do that. He blinked a few times, then started a nod and froze half way, grimacing.

"What did you see?" he said. Peggy cleared her throat. He seemed to know exactly what she meant.

She took out the notebook and handed it to him. As he read through it, his eyes seemed to become foggy, and when he reached the end of it and gave it back, he looked paler and his hand shook.

"Yesterday she also said the projector had buzzed her," Peggy said, very slowly. "She seemed upset about it, she kept looking at it. Then today, she was the same way with the radio in my office."

Don breathed in deep, then turned away and rubbed at his eyes. It took him a moment for him to speak again.

"Put that away," he said, his voice hoarse. "I don't want her to see it."

Peggy put the notebook back in her bag without looking at it, and closed off the zipper so it would not be visible. Don still avoided her eyes.

"They said she was moved to observation from a bed in the maternity ward."

Peggy nodded.

"I'll go look."

She stepped a away from the bed, back into the hallway, and once there she had to wipe the tears off her own eyes.

/

Sally was sitting up in a bed when Peggy walked by her. She had only a bandage over her arm and bruises on the side of her face; other than that she seemed perfectly healthy. When they made eye contact, through a gap in the curtains, Peggy saw none of the scary vacant looks she had noticed at the office.

"Where's my dad?" she immediately asked her, and her voice sounded scared and emotional. Peggy came closer, and introduced herself as her aunt to the nurses.

"He's down the hall," she answered, after the nurses left.

"Is he okay? The doctors wouldn't tell me anything, I've been here for ages."

"He's a little banged up, but he'll be fine."

Sally sighed in relief.

"I'm glad he called you. Henry would've freaked out."

Another nurse came in and took Sally's pressure again, then a doctor showed up to tell Peggy she was being discharged.

"So she's okay?"

The man gave her some slips of paper.

"She's fine. Those are prescriptions, you can get them filled out at the pharmacy, and there's instructions for follow-up as well."

"I'm glad to hear that."

The man nodded, then he took Sally's chart and left. Peggy sat down in the chair beside the bed and rested her back for a moment. Everything was fine, and the tension was finally leaving her. She was beginning to realise how tired she actually was.

"Are you supposed to be my dad's sister, or my mom's?" Sally asked, smiling, and Peggy let out a nervous laugh.

"I guess I could be a… cousin?"

Sally swung her feet off the bed and started to put her shoes back on. Peggy noticed there were specks of blood in her clothes and it made her shudder.

"So, can we go now?"

"Uh… I'm not sure. I don't know if they're letting your dad out just yet."

"Did they…" Sally's voice became lower. "Did he get a blood alcohol test?"

Peggy frowned.

"I don't think so… Why? Did you see him drinking?"

Don no longer kept alcohol in his office, and as far as Peggy knew he had so far remained sober. He hadn't sounded drunk or hungover on the phone either, but that was hard to know considering he was on pain medication. Sally lowered his eyes a moment, unsure if she should continue.

"Sally?"

"Well, no. I didn't see him. But before we crashed, he…" her voice turned into a whisper. "It's a bit fuzzy, but he sort of let go of the wheel."

"What? Why would he do that?"

"I don't know," Sally said. "Did he tell you what happened?"

"Yes, he said he slipped on ice, lost control."

Sally shook her head.

"It didn't feel like that."

"Well, maybe it's hard to tell, if you were going fast then—"

"No. I've been in a car sliding in black ice before. It didn't feel like that at all."

Peggy nodded, and stood from the chair. Her eyes followed Sally's, and she searched for a sign of the person who had scribbled nonsense on thirty lined pages, but found none it. She seemed honest, and in control. For a moment, she considered showing her the notebook; maybe Stan had been right, it had all been a joke and she'd been a wreck all day for nothing — but Don wouldn't like that.

"Are you okay to walk? Should I ask for a chair?" Peggy asked her. Sally stood, a little hesitantly at first, then more firmly.

"Yeah. I'm good."

"Let's go see your dad, then."

Sally walked ahead, and when she reached Don's cot, Peggy hung back and sat out in the hallway. She could hear them speaking, seriously at first and then she heard bits of laughter, and after a while she got up and went to get coffee at the waiting room.

She had expected to be more relieved with this outcome, but she was surprised at how anxious she still felt. There was even a bit of embarrassment there - that she would have to admit to Stan that she had overreacted, that the notebook didn't mean anything, that Sally was just a typical sixteen year old - or was it seventeen? She got two cups of coffee and then regretted it, when she started to feel jittery, but still once it was past 4 am she found that two corner seats had become unoccupied, and she lied down sideways and almost immediately fell asleep.

/

"Miss? I'm sorry, Miss?"

She woke up with a start, and wiped her mouth and looked around in confusion for a moment. A hospital employee was touching her shoulder, and her clothes were wrinkled and - she was just now noticing this - didn't match at all.

"Are you Miss Olson?" the woman said.

"Yes."

"The gentleman in Exam Room 5 was asking for you."

"Oh."

She stood up, and was dizzy a moment from the sudden movement. Then she notice light coming in through the windows, and she looked at her watch and saw it was almost ten in the morning. Shit. She hadn't called Stan yet.

"Uh… Excuse me? Is there a phone somewhere?"

The employee pointed her towards a booth near the waiting room doors, and she rushed towards it while reaching in her bag for change. Stan picked up on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Stan, it's me."

She heard him sigh.

"My God, Peggy. I called you last night and you never picked up. I thought you'd finally been robbed and hacked to little pieces in that shit hole. I'm coming over."

"Stan, I wasn't home."

"What?"

"I got a call from Don. From a hospital."

"What?" higher pitched now, "What happened?"

"Car crash, yesterday around three. Sally's fine, I think he's got a broken leg. DON'T mention this to anyone."

"Jesus, I won't. Why did he need you over there?" a pause, "Are you still over there?"

"Yes… But I'll come back before lunch. Next of kin was Megan so I'm guessing there wasn't really a big choice of people to call."

"Was he drunk?"

"No. At least, I don't think so."

"And did you tell him about the notebook?"

Peggy pulled the receiver away from her mouth for a moment. "Yes," she said. "But Sally was perfectly normal. The only strange thing is…" She wondered if she should say it.

"What?"

"Well.. They have different versions about what happened. I think one of them might be lying."

Stan sighed.

"I wouldn't bet on Don being the truthful one. "

"I'm not sure… Look, you know nothing about this, okay?"

"I know nothing about this," Stan repeated. "Come home."

"I will."

She hung up the payphone, and got out to ask about Exam Room 5.

/

 **To you, few but precious readers, I hope you're liking this.**


	4. Chapter 4

**To you, lovely reviewer, THANKS! I have not moved on, either.**

/

DON

Saturday Morning, December 4, 1971

/

He wanted to call Henry all through the day, but found it hard to find a moment in which Sally was not within earshot. He hardly even managed to talk to Peggy without her also being there, and once his leg was placed into the more permanent cast, Peggy left to get him some clothes and pick up her brother-in-law's car, leaving them both alone in the room.

He wasn't sure why he was suddenly so unnerved by Sally, but he couldn't help it. She was sweet and attentive, she spoke to the nurses and doctors on his behalf and got him coffee and read him the newspaper — he was still too dazed to read more than a few lines — but something about her still felt off to him. She was her normal self, but every time he looked at her she saw those disconnected, red-rimmed eyes, her body attempting to throw itself off a moving car.

"What's iron in the periodic table?" she asked, looking at the crossword section of the paper.

"F-E," he said. She scribbled it in, and Don noticed that as her bruises became less intense, the bags under her eyes were noticeable again. She was also sniffing a little, as though she had a cold, and he thought back to the night he'd woken up with all the windows open. "You know, you can sleep if you want. I'm the only one who's not allowed to."

Sally kept filling in the puzzle.

"This bench is uncomfortable," she said.

"This bed is great. I can move over and you can squeeze in."

She looked up and shook her head, not even considering it.

"I'm not sleepy," she said. "How about 'history segment'?"

"That's an easy one."

"Well, do you know it?"

Don frowned, surprised by her sudden change in tone.

"Era," he said. She wrote it in.

"And...'Make amends'?"

"Atone."

"Yeah, that was it… "

Don leaned over, slowly so as not to stretch his neck, in order to see the newspaper. He could've sworn he'd seen her work at it for hours, but she had barely filled in four or five words, and there were doodles filling all the margins. Then again, time was still a little muddled for him, so he couldn't be sure.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"I just told you like, five minutes ago," Sally said, rolling her eyes. "It's four forty."

"Isn't Peggy supposed to—"

The door opened before he could finish, and Peggy walked in with an old paper bag and two bottles of coke.

"I got some clothes borrowed from my brother-in-law. Pants might be a bit short but they should fit over the cast."

She left the bag in the bench next to Sally, then handed each of them a bottle. Don took his and opened it with his teeth, smiling.

"You're going to break your molars," Peggy said, smiling back, but Don noticed it seemed a bit hard for her to do so. Like Sally, she also looked run down and sleep deprived, and though he'd seen her several times during the night and morning, he only just now noticed her oddly matched clothes and lack of make-up. She looked a lot younger.

Almost as though she was noticing his stare, she brushed her hair down with her hands and straightened her jumper.

"The nurse is on her way with the wheelchair so we can get you to the car," she said. Don nodded, then regretted it as pain shot up through his neck again. He kept forgetting about that. "I'll be outside."

She left the room, and when he reached for the bag of clothes Sally left the newspaper in the bench and left as well, giving him the chance to change. It took him forever to do it, and halfway through, with cold sweat dripping into his eyes, he thought about calling out for help. He didn't, though. He pulled on a pair of old slacks and the saggy shirt Peggy had brought him, then over that his own coat, which had been at the back of the car and was saved from the bloodstains and the scissors of the paramedics.

Then he stopped, seeing the newspaper lying on the bench. He imagined looking through it and finding the same incoherent sentences that Peggy had shown her, that she had been writing even while she smiled and talked to him like nothing was wrong. He stretched a hand to reach it, but did not grab it.

A knock on the door made him flinch and pull his arm back into the bed.

"Need any help? There's a nurse, here," Peggy called. He cleared his throat before speaking.

"I'm ready."

They brought the chair in and he lowered himself into it, and when they wheeled him out he left the paper still in the bench.

/

Don had thought about dropping Sally off at Henry's first, but couldn't do that without calling or knowing he was there, and Sally hadn't even asked about them, so Peggy drove them all the way back to Manhattan to his apartment. Once they stopped outside the building, Sally climbed out of the car with his crutches in the back seat, and opened the door for him.

"I'll take them, don't worry. Would you run inside and ask Victor to come up. I'll need some help with the stairs."

"Sure."

Don waited for her to cross the sidewalk before he turned towards Peggy.

"Thank you," he said, then breathed in deep. "She seems… okay. Doesn't she?"

Peggy nodded, but she seemed to struggle to talk for a moment, and his face fell.

"Doesn't she?"

Peggy shook her head.

"Yes. Yes, she does, but Don, I need to ask… Were you drinking yesterday?"

"What?" he raised his voice. "No. God, why—"

"Sally, she—"

"What did she say?"

Peggy peered out through the window, but Sally still appeared to be inside.

"She asked me if you'd had an alcohol test done. She said… that it didn't feel like you'd slid on ice. That you let go of the wheel."

Don immediately turned towards his apartment, just as Sally was walking out with the doorman and pointing towards the car. He searched his pockets for cigarettes he knew weren't there and then slammed his hand against the dashboard.

"Don? Is it true?"

"She… She told me that she didn't remember," he said, in a whisper.

"But is it true?"

"Need some help, Mr. Draper?"

Don looked out, then back at Peggy one last time before getting his good leg out in the sidewalk.

"I'll call tomorrow," he said, and got out on the crutches and shut the door.

/

PEGGY

Saturday Night, December 4, 1971

/

It was dark, and well past dinnertime, when she finally came home. Stan was waiting in her couch, asleep, with the TV still on, and when she closed the door he jumped up and reached for her baseball bat by the lamp.

"Jesus. It's me."

He dropped it, and Peggy came close and left her bag on the kitchen counter.

"Wow, you look —"

She pulled a beer from the fridge, opened it, and drank half of it in one go.

"What? I look what?"

Stan swallowed hard.

"Different."

Peggy shrugged.

"I'll take that."

She sat in the couch, and after a few seconds he sat down as well.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It took a lot longer than I thought."

"That much I gathered."

She let herself sink into the cushions, and her hands blindly searched for Stan's.

"Let's do that late breakfast tomorrow," she said. "Really late."

She found his hand and squeezed it, and he squeezed it back.

/

DON

Thursday Afternoon, December 9, 1971

/

The cast made it incredibly hard for him to sleep, and he tossed and turned through the night without ever feeling like he managed more than twenty minutes at a time. In the mornings he didn't feel rested, and survived by means of coffee and coke while he did his work and carried meetings through the phone.

He had no idea how Sally managed.

He had started leaving his bedroom door half open so as to have a view of the living room, and every night he had seen her get up around midnight to eat something, and then turn on the TV without the sound. Sometimes she'd stay out so long she went straight to making breakfast and didn't return to her room at all. When he got up, groggy and in pain, she seemed cheerful and energetic, and he could only see the signs of sleep deprivation in her red rimmed eyes.

He had taken her to see Henry and her mother, and later when he'd called to ask about how the visit went Henry said she'd been herself again, only perhaps a little quieter. He attributed it to the accident, of which Don had informed him in a very limited way, and in any case quieter was better than angry and bitter, at least for Henry.

But Don knew how to deal with anger - it was the silence that unnerved him.

"Jim Cutler's been asking about you," Meredith told him over the phone, on his daily update.

"What did he want?"

"I think he doesn't believe you really broke your leg."

Don sighed.

"Tell him I'll fax him my X-rays. What else?"

"You had calls from Franklin at Nabisco, Henderson at Burger Chef, and Campbell at Learjet."

"If Franklin calls again, patch him through to my home number. Redirect Henderson to Peggy, and tell Pete I'm not available and he can call me again in... two weeks."

"Okay. Will do."

"Thanks Meredith. Get Peggy on the line, please."

"Okay. Get well soon!"

He got a dial tone for a moment, then Peggy picked up.

"Don? I'm about to head over to Topaz."

"Oh. I'll call you back later then."

"No, well... I do have a minute."

"No, it's okay. It's not important... Good luck."

He hung up, and rubbed the bridge of his nose and pushed his work notes off the couch. He held his breath a moment and listened for Sally, a few minutes ago she had been making something in the kitchen but now he couldn't see her or hear her.

"Sally?" he called. She didn't answer. He looked towards her door, which was closed, but standing from the couch took him forever and his crutches weren't even within reach. "Sally!"

Again, no answer. Did she say she was leaving? Maybe she did and he forgot. He leaned back on the couch a moment and turned on the TV but he couldn't relax, he couldn't be still. He hauled himself up, using the the nearest wall as support, and jumped on one foot towards Sally's room.

"Sally, can I come in?" he asked. Nothing. Slightly panicky now, he fumbled with the knob and opened the door with his heart pounding against his chest, then sighed, seeing Sally sitting on the edge of her bed. When he came in, she immediately looked away. "Why didn't you answer? I was calling."

She still didn't turn, and Don hopped inside and then let himself down on her bed.

"Will you just look at me?"

She shifted her head to the side, slowly. Her face was red, splotched, like she had been crying for a long time, but before she could make eye contact with him she wiped at her eyes and her face became graver. Don frowned.

"What's wrong?"

His immediate thought was that it was about Betty, about the visit, and in that context the question itself seemed ridiculous. He could've gone to see her too and had chosen not to, hadn't wanted that image of her, but he could easily imagine what that would be like.

"Nothing," she said.

"Stop saying 'nothing'. You can talk to me."

"No, I can't."

"Sally…"

"I don't even know what I'd say."

"What do you mean, you don't know what you'd say? Just tell me what's going on."

"I feel strange, that's all."

"How, strange? Sally, there must be a reason. Is that why you have been waking up so early?"

She turned towards him, as if surprised that he'd noticed.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't… I don't want to talk." She wiped at her face again. "I'm fine."

"Sally, come on."

She stood from the bed and went for the door too fast for him to even begin to lift himself up.

"I'm going to the grocery store," she called out, and he heard the front door bang as it closed.

/

He set himself up in the living room couch and waited for her to come back, prepared to finally confront her, but he must have fallen asleep at some point. When he opened his eyes her door was closed again, and when he tried the knob he found that it was locked. He stared at it a while, and thought about knocking it down, but even if he could manage it with the cast he wasn't sure it would be of any use. He couldn't exactly yell at her into talking.

"Sally, could you please open the door?"

He waited a moment, but got no answer. He rested his weight on the crutches and leaned into the door.

"Please. I know you're awake."

Another pause, but this time he heard movement. After a moment, her voice sounded really close through the wood.

"I don't know what's happening," she said. He lowered himself, and got closer. "I can't sleep anymore."

Don sighed.

"Look, I think… Maybe we should… Maybe there's… help, for you."

He heard Sally scoff through the door.

"As if shrinks were of any use before."

"Well, I don't know what else—"

"Not all us can just drink ourselves to sleep."

"Sally!" He banged on the door and almost slipped. "Sally, I haven't touched it since I came back."

"I don't believe you."

"Open this door." He banged on it again. "Open this door right now."

"You were drinking on Friday. Admit it."

He grabbed on to the knob and rested his forehead on the wood. He had tried not to think of that moment, and of what Peggy had told him. He had attributed to Sally not remembering the whole thing, but now he couldn't be sure if it was that, or if she was lying. He also didn't know which was worse.

"That's not what happened," he said.

"Isn't it? I saw it, Dad."

"What did you see?"

"I saw you let go of the wheel."

"Damn it, Sally, I let go to keep you from jumping out of the car."

"What? I didn't…"

Her voice changed in tone mid-sentence, and he knew that she hadn't been lying. He heard her breathing fast, and her feet started to pace around the room, but he didn't open the door.

"Sally, open up. We can talk. We can fix this."

There was no response and the pacing continued. He started banging on the door again and tried to force the lock.

"Open the door! Open it or I'll kick it down!"

But she didn't. He took a few steps back, then left the crutches on the couch and balanced on his good leg for a moment. He only needed one blow - that door would surely not hold. He grabbed on to the couch for momentum, then pushed himself off and threw his shoulder into the door.

It cracked, but didn't open, and when his leg in a cast landed below him he screamed and fell sideways to the floor. Pain flared in his head and he saw yellow spots for a moment, he bit his lips so hard he thought he might've drawn blood, and couldn't move for a while. Softly he placed a hand on the door and got up again, then collapsed into the couch, drenched in cold sweat.

"Sally, I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry. Please open the door, I need to talk to you. "

Still nothing. Frantic, he limped back to his bedroom and searched all the cabinets for the house master key, which he guessed that he must have even though he'd never actually seen it. He tossed everything out of the drawers, and tried every key and bobby pin he found, but nothing worked, and the door wouldn't budge. He tried dragging the couch closer so that he could lean against it while he kicked with his good leg, but the distance didn't allow him to put a lot of force into it. A few kicks in he felt it splinter, but it didn't pop out.

"Just talk to me," he said, face against the door. "Just say something, please."

He let himself slide down to the ground while still leaning on the door, until he was half lying in the floor with the doorknob right above his face. He stared at it, and ran his fingers over the tiny screws along the lock. Hardly even aware of the pain anymore, he limped his way to the kitchen to get his tools from under the sink, and sat back down on the ground to start disassembling the door.


	5. Chapter 5

**Thank you for reading!**

* * *

PEGGY

Thursday Night, December 9, 1971

/

She had been flooded with work, on account of Don's absence, and she was still in the office at ten pm when she got the call. The moment she picked up the phone she flashed back to that other call, the one Don had made from California, and she wished then that Stan had stayed to work with her. She didn't recognize the calling number, and it was too late to be anything good.

"Is this Peggy Olson?" A woman's voice asked, and she straightened up in her seat. The hand not holding the phone reached for a bottle.

"Yes, this is she." It didn't sound like a person-to-person call. It was not that kind of voice.

"I'm calling from Bellevue Hospital, a Miss Sally Draper gave us your information. Are you a relation?"

Shit. Shit. SHIT.

"Yes, I'm her… I'm her aunt. Is she there? What happened?"

The woman's voice remained calm.

"She was brought here by the NYPD, with a superficial glass cut in her thigh. I'm sure they'll be able to provide more information here."

"Is she alone?"

"Yes. Are you not her next of kin?"

"Uh… yes, yes. I'll be right there."

She hung up, then immediately dialed Don's home number. It went straight to voicemail.

"God damn it!"

She slammed the receiver down, then grabbed her purse and walked out of her office, bumping hard against someone on the hallway. Her things flew from her hands and her purse spilled on the floor. Looking up, he saw Roger Sterling fixing up his tie with a turned off cigarette in his mouth.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. He raised his eyebrows.

"I could ask the same thing."

She finished picking up her things and started again towards the elevators.

"I work here," she said. He walked right behind her.

"So do I."

"No, you don't. You haven't been here in months."

"Well, if this is the way you greet me, I'll have to make it even longer."

She pressed on the elevator button, and he stood to wait beside her. She couldn't help but jiggle her feet in nervous anticipation.

"Why in such a hurry to leave at… two hours to midnight? Got someone waiting at home?" He turned his head sideways towards her.

"I'm not in the mood, Roger."

"In the mood for what?"

The elevator doors opened, and they both got in. Peggy pressed the first floor button several times.

"First basement for me, honey," Roger said. She scowled, but then looked up and turned towards him.

"How much have you had to drink today?" she asked.

"God, not enough."

"Are you going somewhere? No, don't answer. Look, Roger, I have an emergency. I need to borrow your car."

"My car?" He let out a laugh. "That's cute."

"I'm serious. If you can't borrow it, then can you drive me? It's going to take me a while to get a cab in this weather, and this is important."

"What is?"

"My emergency."

"I know that, but what IS the emergency?"

Peggy took a deep breath in, and decided to go with the truth.

"You can't mention this to anyone. Sally Draper just called me from a hospital."

Roger seemed to immediately sober up, and he pressed the basement button on his own.

"Why? What happened? Why would she call you?"

"I'm her fake aunt. "

"What?"

The doors opened up at the underground parking lot, and Peggy stepped out.

"I'll explain later. Where's your car?"

/

They stopped outside Don's apartment, but only Peggy got out of the car.

"I thought we were going to the hospital."

"Stay here," Peggy said, and ran off towards the door and past the doorman before he could protest.

She took the stairs two steps at a time, and arrived at Don's door out of breath and sweating. She rang the bell, twice, then started knocking on the door.

"Don? It's Peggy, open up."

No one came to the door.

"Don!"

She pressed her ears towards it, but heard nothing inside. She took a moment to catch her breath and then headed back down towards the doorman.

"Did you see Mr. Draper leave?" she asked. The man looked flustered.

"Look, I don't know what's going on…"

"Did he or didn't he?"

"Yes, he did."

"When was that?"

"Ma'am, I'm not sure…"

"Ten minutes ago? An hour ago? Best guess."

"Maybe half an hour ago. But…"

"What?"

The doorman looked around, nervous.

"He didn't leave in his car. He walked out. I asked if I could get him a cab, but he refused. He seemed upset about something."

Peggy took a deep breath, and tried not to imagine Don limping around in his crutches in this weather.

"How about Sally?" she asked. The doorman shook his head.

"I didn't see her. He asked for her, too, but I didn't see her. I wanted to call the police but he said he'd manage."

Sally nodded, and turned towards the street. She saw Roger still in the car, looking at her through the slightly open door.

"If he comes back, call me. And call the police."

She left her card on his desk and rushed outside.

"He wasn't home," she told Roger. "The doorman says he left about half an hour ago, walking. Sally might've called him next."

"Walking? Wasn't his leg broken?"

"He's on crutches. Let's go to Bellevue, maybe he's already there."

"It's like ten below, why on earth was he walking?"

Roger pulled back into the road, and Sally rubbed her hands over her face.

"I don't know. Something's wrong."

"Yeah, I could've told you that. What if he's not at Bellevue?"

"I don't know, Roger!" She looked at her watch. "Stan is going to kill me…"

"Stan from art? What does he have to do with this?"

Peggy just rolled her eyes. Powdery snow was sticking to the windows, and after a while she could no longer see anything, and she rolled hers down to wipe it off. She saw then, on the opposite late, the back of a man in a flannel robe, limping along using the walls for support.

"Stop the car!" she screamed, and Roger stepped hard on the brakes making the tyres squeal.

"Jesus Christ! A little warning, I have a bad heart!"

She pointed through her window at the figure.

"That's him. That's Don."

Roger leaned over against her to get a better look and she pushed him away.

"Is he wearing slippers?"

Peggy opened her door.

"Do a u-turn, meet me on the other side," she said, and crossed the road immediately, making a cab screech to a halt. Someone yelled at her, but she didn't stop. It was freezing out and the sidewalks were slippery, and she almost fell a few times, but managed to catch up before reaching the next corner. "Don!"

He stopped, but it seemed hard for him to turn around. Peggy sighed with relief that he'd heard her, and she ran up with her feet sinking into slush, but she couldn't hide her shock at the sight of him. His hair was frozen and covered in snow, and his eyes seemed wild and unfocused, as though he wasn't sure where he was or where he was going. He flinched when she grabbed his arm, but then tried to talk and only managed a stutter.

"Sa—Sally, she…"

"She's okay, Don," Peggy said, grabbing on to him. "She's in Bellevue. They called me."

He stared, then shook his head, as if he didn't understand. Peggy looked back towards the street and saw Roger cutting off cabs to park right beside them. She started leading Don towards the car.

"Where are your crutches?" she asked, but he didn't answer. Roger got out of the car and opened the door to the back seat, and when Don saw him he stiffened up and turned towards Peggy.

"Wha—what—"

"Get inside, Don. You're freezing."

Roger helped her push him in, being careful to settle his plastered leg slowly into the back seat cushions. His toes, Peggy noticed, looked greenish.

Other cars honked at them to move, and Roger yelled back at them as he closed the back seat door. He turned to Peggy.

"Is he drunk?"

"I didn't smell any booze."

"Yeah, neither did I…"

"Let's get to Bellevue."

Roger nodded, and ran back around the car to take the wheel. Peggy got back into the passenger seat and cranked up the car's heating to max. She turned towards the back as soon as Roger started driving.

"Don? Can you tell me what happened?"

Don pulled his flannel robe tight against his skin, shivering. Peggy looked towards Roger and pulled off the scarf he was wearing.

"Hey! I'm driving."

"Here," Peggy gave him the scarf, and he took it and squeezed at it, all crumpled, then pressed it against his chest.

"Where's— Where's Sally?" he asked.

"She's at Bellevue Hospital. We're on our way there right now."

His eyes widened.

"Why? H-How do you know? How did you find—"

"She called me, Don. She's okay. Why did you walk out of your apartment? Your doorman said you refused a to get a cab, and you don't even have shoes on. What the hell happened?"

Don shook his head, doubling himself over and still shivering.

"Don?"

"Just leave him be a moment," Roger said. "We're almost there."

"Wh-what are you doing here?"

Roger scoffed.

"Oh, nothing much, just saving your ass from hypothermia."

He took a hard turn left, and stretched a hand to clear the condensation off the windshield. All the windows were fogged up now, and the streetlights looked diffused and glittery.

"I… I took down her door and…" Don coughed. "She wasn't there. She wasn't— God, it's cold."

Peggy sighed, and kept herself from asking him to elaborate.

"Yes. Yes it is."

Roger leaned forwards to read the lit up signs, and then briefly climbed up into the sidewalk before cutting through the bus lane and entering the little shoulder right at the entrance to the hospital. Peggy let go of the handle above her window, breathing in for a moment, and then opened the door.

"Are you coming?" she asked Roger. He seemed to hesitate.

"I…" He looked back at Don, who was struggling to open his own door. "Yeah. I'll park the car and look for you inside. "

"Okay."

Peggy got out, and finished opening Don's door and helped him out. Upon seeing the cast, one of the paramedics at the entrance called out and an orderly approached them with a wheelchair. Peggy let go of Don, watched him being whisked inside, and she slowly made her way inside the place where she'd wasted away two months of her life.

/

She lost sight of Don in the maze of the emergency ward, but she asked first for Sally, and after a while of waiting around the nurses' station for Roger to show up she retreated to one of the smaller waiting areas. It was a while before the attending nurse got back to her, with the ER doctor close behind.

"Are you Peggy Olson? The aunt?" the man asked, as the nurse retreated. Peggy stood from her seat and pulled her hair back.

"Yes, that's me."

"Come with me, please."

She bit her tongue and started trying to pull the wrinkles out of her skirt while she followed him. The man led her through a narrow hall, and then past a door to the emergency ward. He stopped there.

"Were the nurses able to inform you?" he asked. Peggy shook her head.

"Only that she had a cut in her leg."

"Yes," the doctor nodded. "Well, she seems to be all right at the moment, but the first responders reported some unusual circumstances."

Peggy frowned, and waited for him to keep going. It crossed her mind that maybe it was Don that should be hearing this first, or maybe her mother, or Henry, or, God, maybe even Megan, at least she'd been a sort of mother figure. If she had had more than three interactions with her in the last ten years, that would be too much.

"She was found vandalizing a store; she cut herself on the storefront window."

"What? Why would she do that?"

"The paramedics said she seemed disturbed, and displayed incoherent speech and was walking unsteadily. We're waiting on her results, but are you aware of any alcohol consumption? Has she ever been a drug user?"

Peggy shook her head, frowning.

"She's sixteen."

"Currently the age in which they start using hovers around her age, specially for girls."

The doctor went on to ask her about her habits, her schooling, if she had ever acted out before, if she had ever drunk before, and all through that interrogation Peggy could not stop thinking about how she was not supposed to be there, not supposed to be involved in this at all. The doctor told her that Sally had been sedated for 'disruptive' behavior, and they were waiting for a consult with a psychiatrist, who would visit when she woke up. They finally let her through to an open ward, where Sally occupied a corner bed and slept fitfully, both her hands and feet strapped down to the bed posts.

Coming back to the waiting room, she saw Roger pacing around.

"Where were you? I thought you'd wait for me here," he said, then seemed to look at her more closely. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Peggy pulled back her hair again — which had by now lost the shape granted by her curling iron — and rested a hand on the nurses' station.

"What took you so long?"

"The parking. It was a nightmare. I had to pay this kid fifty bucks — uh, do you need to sit down?"

Peggy nodded. Roger led her to the waiting room, and she dropped herself down on the nearest chair and started rubbing her face. She wondered briefly if Don would want Roger to know about all this, but Don wasn't there now, and she couldn't deal with this on her own.

"For God's sake, just tell me," Roger said. "Is he dead?"

Peggy lifted her head.

"No," she said. "I should— I should ask about him."

"I thought that was what you were doing."

"No, I was asking about Sally."

"Oh." Roger sat back. "Is she…?"

"She's not dead, Roger. Apparently…" she took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "She vandalized a store and flipped out at the paramedics. They're treating her like a mental case, she's — she's strapped to a bed."

They had never strapped her to a bed. She had never even wanted to leave the bed.

"Wow," Roger said. He looked at her closely for a moment, making her turn away. Then he took off his coat and handed it to her, and sat down in the bench beside her.

/

DON

Thursday Night, December 9, 1971

/

He was warm again, and for a while he thought of nothing but that. He saw through the corner of his eyes the white lights of the hospital, and the white uniform of the nurses and it was blinding, so he looked away towards the pillow beneath him and kept on hugging the warm compress someone had placed under him. Slowly the pain meds they gave him started taking effect and he felt his leg less and less, his hands and feet that had initially burned from the compresses now felt like they belonged to him again, and he didn't mind when another nurse came over and wrapped each finger and toe in gauze and then borrowed him dry socks. He had a heavier blanket lying on top of him and the weight felt good.

It felt good right up until his mind cleared, and he thought again of Sally.

He straightened up on the cot he'd been placed, still shivering a little, and called out to the first nurse he saw.

"Could I get some crutches?" he asked. He looked down towards his leg and noticed his cast was new and clean, and a big sock had been placed over it.

"Sir, are you sure—"

"I'm fine. I'm okay, I just need the crutches."

They found him a pair, and he stood up on a wobbly leg and headed for the doors.

"Sir, I'm sorry, you can't leave yet. The doctor will see you soon."

"I don't need it, I'm fine. I need to use a phone."

"There's a wheelchair available—"

He burst past the doors, and to his right he locked eyes with Peggy, who immediately stood up from a waiting bench. He was surprised to see her for a moment, then he remembered her face appearing right in front of him as he walked in search of Sally. Beside her, Roger was still sitting down, staring at him with strange concern. What on earth was Roger doing there?

"Don!" Peggy approached him, and led him over to the bench where he sat down, then she took a chair from the nurse's station and helped him raise his leg over it.

He took a few deep breaths before he could speak again.

"Where's Sally?" he asked. "How did you find her?"

"She's in an exam room in the emergency ward. I saw her, Don. She was sleeping. She had a cut in her leg from a store window but that was it. "

"Why… Why did they call you and not me?"

"I don't know. Maybe they did and you weren't home," Peggy said. Don looked straight at her and he knew she didn't believe that. He turned towards Roger.

"I don't understand."

"We don't either," Roger said. "Why don't you start with your side of things?"

"I… I don't…"

"Don," Peggy spoke firmly. "You were walking up first avenue on a robe and slippers, without your crutches. If we hadn't seen you, you could've died."

He thought of Sally's door. The bolts starting to fall down, the whole thing jiggling until one last push sent it crashing down.

"Sally locked herself up in her room. Wouldn't come out," he said, resting his forehead on his hands and his elbows on his knee. "I tried to knock the door down but I couldn't do it. So I… I unscrewed all the bolts. I came in, and she was gone."

"From her room? In a sixth floor?"

Don nodded.

"The window was open. It's a short jump from there to the fire-escape, not an easy step, but doable. She must've done that, I don't know how else she could've made it out."

"So you just went out after her like this? Are you insane, what did you think was gonna happen?" Roger said. Don shook his head.

"I wasn't thinking. I didn't…" He looked at Peggy. "She said to me… What she said to you. She said that the accident hadn't been a skid in black ice."

He would have to say it, and he hated it. He could feel his face, his jaw, his whole body shaking.

"She said that she had seen me let go of the wheel. I did, Peggy. I did let go of the wheel."

There was no look of harsh disappointment in Peggy. She knew there was more.

"I wasn't drinking. I let go of it because," he slowed down. "Sally tried to open the door and jump out of the car. I thought that she might do worse now."

Peggy stretched a hand towards him, but seeing the patches on his fingers she pulled it back half way and rested it between them. Roger stood, and cursed, then he announced he was going out for a smoke and would be right back.

Don looked at him leave, then he looked at Peggy. Would she stay, now? Would he stay, too, if it was her in this position? He liked to imagine he would, at least for a while, but found it hard to remember if he had ever willingly endured the pain of another person for as long as Peggy had by now. He just remembered moments, just minutes in which he'd really felt connected to someone, really placed himself in their shoes. And then he'd always pull back, remove himself from the situation, and proceed to act like it had never happened.

He looked out again at Roger through the glass doors. Two people, two work friends who barely knew Sally, both of whom he'd at times alienated and even considered to be nothing but coworkers. Was that really all there was? Were they it? He looked back on those times with Betty, when he had really believed he'd had everything he could ever need, and he felt incredibly lonely.

"Don." Peggy's voice startled him, and he straightened up too fast. When he turned his face towards her he saw she had taken off the coat she'd been wearing, which he guessed was Roger's, and was now offering it to him. "Put it on. You're still shaking."

He took it without a word, and pulled up the collar and buttoned it close.

"Don," she said again. He didn't look up. "Don, I spoke with Sally's doctor."

"What?" He did look up then. "When?"

"After they took you in. She was asleep, but... That's because they had her sedated." She spoke of a record store, of policemen and paramedics. "They said they would have her checked by a psychiatrist when she woke up."

Don shook his head.

"This doesn't make any sense."

"Don, don't you think that her mother's illness... Together with other stressors, could be the cause of this?"

"No." He shook his head again. "She was doing fine. All through this, she's been fine."

"Sometimes we repress somethings and they—"

"No!" He raised his voice far too much, and regretted it when he saw Peggy flinch. "No. It's something else."

Peggy nodded, clearly not wanting to argue with him, but he could tell she thought he was wrong.

/

He woke up alone in the same bench, and he was not surprised to see that Peggy and Roger were gone. He grabbed his crutches and limped to bathroom, where he tried and failed to wash his hair, and then returned with Roger's coat still over his grubby robe. He would need to get home at some point and change. He'd also need to call Henry. And talk to Betty. Tomorrow he was supposed to pick up the boys, and what on earth was he going to say to them? They would be terrified just looking at him.

He turned to approach the nurses desk, and saw Peggy coming through the doors of the visiting room with two take-out coffees.

"I didn't know you were still here," he said, and she frowned.

"You think I'd just go?"

"No, I..." He took the coffee. "I mean, you don't have to stay. It's almost morning."

"It is morning, Don. Don't worry, Roger's covering for us. He'll be back in about an hour to take you home so you can change."

He looked down at his dirty sleepwear and nodded. He'd left the house a mess, but he could ask Roger to wait outside.

"What about you?" He asked. Peggy turned back towards the ER door.

"Sally's in a proper room now, and she spoke to the psychiatrist earlier. They're probably going to talk to you now. Go see her. I'll go home now and stay with her when you leave."

Don nodded, but he didn't feel sure.

"You don't have to do this Peggy."

She just scoffed.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'll get going now, I'll see you later."

She left, and he stopped a moment to gather himself up and finish his coffee before he asked to see Sally.

They let him into a room with single bed, but Sally was not on it. The nurse he spoke to outside told him she'd been at it for hours - pacing back and forth from the door to the wall - and her bare feet had started to blister and she looked pale, but refused to stop. When he came in she looked up at him but kept on walking.

"Sally, what are you doing?" he said. She picked up her pace, and Don saw her forehead beaded with sweat.

"Nothing," she said.

"Stop. I want to talk to you."

She kept on going.

"Sally, stop, you're hurting yourself."

She still kept on going. Don saw one of her hands shaking as she raised it to steady herself on the turn, but it stopped when she lowered it. Her eyes never focused on him, and when she turned again, right in front of him, he saw a bloody stain seeping through her hospital gown.

"Stop!"

He reached for her arm and held her, but she shook and violently pulled away.

"Don't touch me! Let go!" She screamed with such intensity she might've been the victim of torture. Don let go, mute from dread, and she ran behind the bed and stated pacing a little further away from him. He walked backward until his back touched the door, and behind him two orderlies came through, one of them carrying a filled syringe.

"What is this?" He asked.

"We're sedating her before she pulls her stitches."

He wanted to ask them not to, but he couldn't bear to watch her red-rimmed vacant eyes, her feet pacing around the room despite the cut in her leg. It almost looked as though she couldn't feel that pain, and when she had spoken it had felt like she didn't know him. Or maybe he didn't know her.

One of the orderlies reached for her and held her down, and Don turned away and left the room just as she started to scream. He got two doors down the hallway before he was sick in the nearest trash can.

The attending doctor explained to him that other than the cuts there was nothing physically wrong with her - she'd received no blow to the head, there were no visible tumours, no alcohol in her blood, and her actions could only be attributed to a psychological disturbance. Her test for toxins came negative but they still asked about drugs, they asked about previous alcohol consumption, and they said that she might be suffering from withdrawal syndrome.

"No, I've been through withdrawal. This isn't it."

"Sir, as you know, it affects younger people in different ways. Especially when it also involves nicotine and other drugs."

"What other drugs? She's clean, the tests say she's clean."

"If she's withdrawing then they would appear clean."

"She's not on drugs! She hasn't smoked in almost a year, that's not the reason this is happening."

They asked him about her first concerning incident, and he mentioned her moods and what happened with the windows. When he told them about the visit to Betty, though, and Sally claiming she was already dead, they seemed to forget about the drugs and said it could've all been caused by grief and stress.

"With your consent, we can admit her into our psychiatric ward. Otherwise she'll have to be released today."

Don heard those words as though spoken from afar. His hands held on tight to the crutches and he hobbled towards the nearest seat, where he dropped down. He found himself actually wishing it was drugs, though he knew deep down it wasn't, just so there would be a reason and a cure. He couldn't bear the thought of going back to her room and seeing her strapped down to a bed.

He made his way to the payphone, and he pushed the change Peggy had given her before she left, and dialed Henry's number, but he stopped, and hung up, before the first ringing tone. Was he supposed to pick Bobby and Gene that day, or was it the next day? He couldn't remember anymore. He wouldn't be able to fake a normal voice if he spoke to Henry or Betty, he couldn't pass Sally through, couldn't pretend it was just a fender bender if they decided to come over. He let go of the phone, and he slid down to sit in the floor of the booth.


	6. Chapter 6

PEGGY

Friday Morning, December 10, 1971

/

Stan was still at home when she came back, and he raised his head from the bed as she kicked off her shoes and joined him.

"With that face, I'm not even gonna ask," he said, and she buried her face in a pillow and just stayed there, unmoving, until it was fully light outside. She turned to find Stan gone, but moments later she heard him in her kitchen. There was a sizzling sound of something being fried.

"Is that for me?" she called out.

"Well, it is technically your bacon."

"Is there coffee to go with it?"

"Yes."

"And is there booze to go with the coffee?"

Stan laughed, and peered at her from the door frame.

"That bad?"

She dragged herself off the bed, and started dropping off her clothes from the day before to get into the shower. She cleaned off the smell of the hospital and tried not to think about having to go back there. Once she came out, she dressed for work even though she knew she wasn't even going to go.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Stan asked her when she sat down, joking tone aside. Peggy poured herself her second coffee of the morning and braced herself.

"They're saying that she should be committed," she said. Stan stretched a hand towards her.

"You know, it doesn't have to be a bad thing," he said. "There's a lot more help than there used to be. It helped Ginsberg a lot."

Peggy shook her head.

"It's not the same. And I don't think Don will agree to it." She drank half of her coffee down and wished there really was alcohol in it. "I'm not sure he should, either, she's too young, it's too sudden."

They ate breakfast in silence a for a while, but Peggy kept catching Stan glimpsing at the clock. He hadn't left the apartment yet and he was already late.

"Tell Marcia I'll be dropping by, hopefully around lunchtime," she said. Stan stood from the table, and sighed.

"Don't," he said. "Come back here and sleep. You've already managed a day off, might as well make something of it."

Peggy nodded. Stan slung his briefcase over his shoulder and leaned down for a quick kiss, but when he reached the door he stopped with a hand still holding the knob.

"Can I ask you something?" he said. "It's an honest question, no need to freak out about subtext or anything like that."

She frowned.

"Subtext? You're already freaking me out."

"I wanted to ask," he said, and took a pause to breathe. "Are you doing this out of friendship, or do you still feel like you owe him?"

Peggy scoffed.

"It's ridiculous you even have to ask me that," she said. Stan nodded slowly, and opened the door.

"Well, good luck today," he said, and he was halfway gone when the phone started ringing. Already standing, Stan reached the receiver before she could even react.

"Hello? Oh, hi Meredith…"

"Meredith?" Peggy said. Stan muttered a couple of 'uh-huhs' into the phone, then stretched it towards Peggy.

"It's for you."

"What does she want?"

"She's got a call for you."

"Why isn't Marcia—"

"Just pick up. I have to go."

Stan handed her the phone, and left the apartment. Peggy placed the receiver against her ear as she stood.

"Meredith, it's Peggy."

"Oh, thank God," she heard her say. Her voice sounded even shriller than usual. "I have Mr. Francis on the phone, he insists on speaking with you. I told him you weren't in the office yet, but he wouldn't get off the line."

"Who's Mr. Francis?"

"He's Mrs. Francis' husband."

"Who's—Oh. Why is he calling me?"

"Well, he wanted to speak to Mr. Draper but I told him he wasn't in. He says he's been trying his house since last night. He wanted to know if there was anyone who would know where he was…"

"And you said me? Meredith, I—"

"Well, what was I supposed to say? He's like—the mayor, and Mr. Sterling is also not in…"

"Okay! Okay, just patch him through."

Peggy waited on the line and had to fight the urge to just hang up and yank the phone cable off the wall. She wasn't supposed to be the one having this conversation, and if it was what she thought it was…

"Hello, is this Ms. Olson? Hello?" A strange, grave voice sounded through the other line. Peggy stamped her feet in the carpet and cursed under her breath.

"Yes, this is she."

"I'm Henry Francis, I'm—"

"Yes. I know. Look, you should talk to Don, he's at Bellevue Hospital," she said, her words all stuck together, and she felt like such a coward.

"He—what? What's he doing there? Is it because of the crash? Where's Sally? Why hasn't he called?"

Peggy wanted desperately to know if this was about Mrs. Francis, but there was no way she was going to ask.

"Sally's there too. Look, you should really talk to him, I don't think I should—"

"His secretary says he hasn't been in the office the whole week, do you know what's going on?"

"I…"

"Why is he at Bellevue?"

"I really—"

"Yeah, right. You can't say."

He hung up.

"Shit."

Peggy went back to her bedroom to get her hat and coat, and got downstairs so fast she almost thought she'd catch up to Stan.

/

DON

Friday Morning, December 10, 1971

/

He saw Henry walking into the hospital and heading straight towards the reception, and he straightened up on his seat so fast one of his crutches clattered to the floor. He saw him turn and stare at him, the usual civil expression he reserved for him completely gone, and he made it to where he was sitting in three long strides.

"Henry, listen, I can explain—" he started, but Henry didn't let him finish.

"I've called everyone in your office trying to reach you, why the hell didn't you call in?"

Don rested his head back against the wall and thought maybe he'd disappear if he didn't look at him. If this was bad news, he couldn't take them.

"Hey!" Henry snapped, loud enough to make the nurses turn. "Jesus Christ, Don. Are you drunk?"

Don looked away.

"No. I'm not," he said, and his voice sounded hoarse. "Why are you here?"

"Why am I—" Henry's face was red with rage. "Betty's in the ICU, Don. You were supposed to pick up the boys yesterday, I've had to leave them with my mother."

Don felt relief at the news, and then he hated himself for it. Henry stared, hoping for a response, but when Don kept quiet he leaned in and fixed his eyes on the socks and hospital slippers he was wearing, and on the edge of the sleep robe visible under Roger's coat. Don tried to cover it up but the coat wasn't long enough.

"What's going on? Where are your shoes?" Henry asked.

Don pulled his already messed up hair back and gritted his teeth.

"I didn't come here for myself. Sally's in there," he said.

Henry paled, and his fists tightened.

"What did you do?" he asked. Don scoffed.

"What did I do?" he repeated. "What did you do? You said she'd been acting ' _strange_ ', well how long did that go on? What did you do about it? Nothing." He stood up on his good leg, leaning into the wall, and saw the hospital orderlies slowly approaching. "You were with her every day and you didn't notice."

"What are you even talking about?"

Don swayed a little, seeing black from standing up too fast, and Henry placed a hand on his shoulder.

"What are you talking about, Don?"

Don looked away.

"They say she's an addict. Or insane," he muttered, and his voice sounded oddly detached. "I'm not having her committed."

Henry sighed, deeply, and pulled his hand away.

/

PEGGY

/

There was a snowstorm coming through and there were no cabs, so it took Peggy a while to make her way back downtown. She walked through the hospital doors in a hurry, but immediately she felt an arm dropping over her shoulders.

"You don't want to get in here, sweetheart."

She recognized Roger under an uncharacteristic brown hat. He winked and started leading her away from the waiting area.

"Why? What happened?"

"Henry Francis happened."

Peggy turned, but Roger kept pushing her away until they were back out in the sidewalk, next to the ambulances. Hell. She had intended to warn him, but she should've known Henry could get there faster.

"Did they fight or something?"

Roger shrugged, and pulled his keys out of his pocket, letting go of Peggy's shoulder to open his car.

"Mmm, no, not exactly. I mean, it wouldn't have been fair if they had, what with the crutches and all, so I guess we can be thankful for that."

"Jesus. What about?"

They got into the car, and Roger lit up a cigarette before turning the ignition. He cranked up the heat, but left the window open and snow started to fall in.

"Don wants her to get released and see another doctor. Henry wants her temporarily committed, but also in another hospital. And they can't agree which one."

"But it's Don's decision, isn't it?"

"It is, but Henry's the one with the clout to get her seen by a specialist, and Don's clearly in no condition to become a caregiver so… Yeah, I'm Team Henry on this one."

"Well, what does her mother say?"

Roger scoffed.

"Betty? She doesn't know or ever will know. On that matter they did agree."

Roger put out the half of a stub he held, and started pulling away back into the road.

"Where are we going?" Peggy asked.

"Lunch."

"I've just had breakfast."

"How about Italian? I know a really good place."

"Roger… If we're not there then we might as well go back to work."

"What? Nonsense, I've already excused you for the day."

"Well, you're not really my boss anymore."

Roger shrugged.

"You're right. In fact, I don't even work there anymore."

Peggy cast a sideways glance at him.

"Are you going to tell me what you were doing there yesterday, then? You weren't even in your old floor."

Roger smiled.

"Now, wouldn't you like to know."

Peggy eyed him suspiciously, but didn't reply. It occurred to her that though they had known each other over ten years, this was probably the longest they'd ever been together. In fact, this was probably the first time they had actually talked - waving at each other excluded - since that final day at SC&P, spent drinking sweet vermouth and skating around the empty office. That seemed like so long ago now.

The snowstorm intensified as they drove, and by the time they stopped at a place some businesses had started to close. Roger got them inside a small family restaurant and ordered for two before Peggy could stop him. He seemed, she thought, unnaturally cheery, and when he took off his hat she recognized the feathers in the brim.

"That's Don's, isn't it?" she said. A basket with warm flat bread was placed between them, and Peggy asked for yet another coffee.

"That's bad for your teeth, you know. It stains them."

"So does smoking. Why do you have Don's hat?"

"I took it. From his house. Paid off the doorman, he let me in."

Peggy frowned.

"I tried that, it didn't work…"

"You probably bid too low." He grabbed a flatbread and tore a piece of it to dip in vinegar. "The place was trashed. All the drawers had been pulled out, there was a door lying in pieces in the living room…"

The way he said it was casual, but Peggy could detect an underlying seriousness in his voice. This was no joke and they both knew it.

"Did he ask you to go there?"

"Of course not. But he was waiting on a test and didn't want to go himself and I wanted my coat back. Besides, he ran the risk of being committed himself, limping around that hospital in his pajamas."

"How did he react?"

Roger chuckled.

"Not well. It didn't help that I arrived with his things right in the middle of the whole Henry debacle."

He shrugged, and downed the drink he'd just been served. When their food was served he started eating and didn't speak again until he'd finished, going through three glasses in the process while Peggy kept at it with her coffee. She had another serving wrapped up to take back to the hospital once they were done, and she stood from the table the moment they brought it to her, but Roger remained sitting down.

"Are you going back?" he asked. Peggy nodded, and carried in one hand the cardboard box with the food.

"I'll just drop this and check in before heading home."

Roger looked down. He seemed sombre all of a sudden, and Peggy waited by the edge of the table.

"This is so depressing," he said, and pulled out a cigarette. "You're supposed to be successful, rich, powerful, you're supposed to do all these things, but also raise your kids, also be with your wife, also go to their school meetings and take them to their things and build a relationship… Otherwise they'll hate you and go crazy and live in a commune with hippies and blame it all on you."

Peggy sighed and sat down, and Roger ordered another drink.

"I mean, in what time are we supposed to do all these things? Honestly? It's not humanly possible."

Peggy thought that it was, that she had seen it done, but she kept quiet and fiddled with her empty cup.

"I guess you made the best of it, didn't you?" Roger said. "You chose one thing, and you did that well."

Peggy looked up and bit down hard on her tongue.

"You chose, too, Roger," she said. "So did Don."

"But then he chose again, spent a year trying to fix it, and what good did that do? It was over, it couldn't be fixed."

She wanted to tell him that Sally was sick, that Don's actions had little to nothing to do with it, but Roger wasn't really talking about Sally.

"Children want to love their parents," she said, keeping her voice low. "You just need to do the work."

Roger scoffed.

"What work?"

"Whatever work it takes."

Roger finished his drink, and started counting from a wad of bills he kept in his pocket. He left a big tip, then stood from the table and looked back at Peggy.

"I'm going to need you to be more specific."

/

DON

/

Sally was weaned off of the sedatives at Don's insistence, and when she woke up there was no more of the pacing. Before going into her room, he had washed and changed in a nurses' locker room he'd bribed an orderly to gain access to, and though he could still see signs of his previous night in his face and hands, he felt a little more like himself. A little more in control. He threw his ragged sleep robe in the trash as he got out, and kept the shoe he couldn't wear in the bag Roger had left him.

He opened the door with his weight resting on the crutches, and sat by the edge of her bed. She was awake, he knew that, but he remained quiet until she turned towards him.

"Dad?"

He felt a rush of relief at the sound of her voice, and he stretched a hand to touch hers. She immediately recoiled.

"Sally, it's okay," he said, but didn't try to touch her again. She looked around her, confused, then her eyes settled on the light bulb in the ceiling.

"Why am I here?"

It was her voice, the one he knew, but it sounded like all emotion had been drained from it. She seemed to be looking at him but she wasn't actually making eye contact, and when he moved to try and meet her gaze she shifted to the side. He wanted to grab her hand again, tightly, and tell her to look at him, but he knew he couldn't do that.

"What's the last thing you remember?" he asked.

"I don't know. Being in my room…"

"You don't remember going out?"

"No."

"You don't remember the record store, the one in—"

"I already said no. Why are you asking me again?"

"I'm sorry. Listen, Sally…" he shuffled and tried to get a little closer. "The doctors are going to ask you a few questions, as well. Is that okay?"

She kept on staring at the lamp, and took a while to speak again.

"Can you turn that off?"

"What?"

Don followed her eyes to the light.

"That. Can you turn it off?"

"Is it bothering you?"

"It's too bright."

"Okay. I'll turn it off."

He stood and leaned on his crutches, and only then, and for an instant, did he feel like she was really noticing him. There was a pained expression in her face that looked too much like terror. Terror, or perhaps guilt. He turned off the light, and left the room as the doctors came in.

He had thought, the second she opened her eyes, that it could all be okay. That this could be just a passing thing, and he'd be able to get her home that night, and visit Betty again the next day, and then it would all be like it had been before. That, he was now sure, couldn't be. If he brought her back to his apartment he wouldn't be able to sleep without wondering if she was sleeping too, if she was about to jump out the window again or smash in the radio. If she acted out again, he wouldn't be able to restrain her while he still had the cast, he couldn't take her to work while she remained like this, and Henry was already caring for Betty and the boys, he couldn't do any more than that. He had no choice.

He fished out of his pocket the pack of cigarettes Roger had given him earlier, and was halfway to lighting one up before he caught the eye of one of the nurses.

"Not here. I know," he said. He limped back around the corner, and headed for the street doors. He caught a glimpse of Henry in the waiting area, talking to some doctor, but he made no eye contact and kept on going as though they weren't there. Once he was out in the cold, he breathed it in and let himself shiver for a moment before he lit up the cigarette. He held it up between blistered fingers as he blew out the smoke.

"Will it ever be too cold for a smoke?" a strange voice asked him, and he turned to see an older woman using an IV line as a cane, a huge wool scarf wrapped around her neck and hiding a catheter line. She pulled out a cigarette with gloved hands and Don leaned over to light it up for her.

"Not today," he said. The woman smiled, shifting her head sideways, and she breathed out a puff of smoke into the whiteness of the sidewalk.

"Thanks," she said. "Bad day?"

"Are there ever any good days in this place?"

"Oh yes," the woman said. "You should spend some time in the maternity waiting room."

Don smiled and his mind flashed back, but those memories now felt more tainted than ever. There had been joy there - he was sure of that - but when he remembered those moments he always thought first of the fear, and the inadequacy, that feeling that he was a faker and a cheat and that he should've never had that life, should've never been a father. He breathed in and looked down, and the smell of menthol cigarettes mingled with his own smoke. He thought of Betty and put out his cigarette against the door.

"I'm sorry," the woman said. He nodded without looking at her. "But it's easier for us, you know?"

He wasn't sure if by us she meant her, or the both of them.

"How's that?"

"The patients," she said. "It's easier for us. It's the loved ones that get the uglier bits of it."

He imagined telling her he wasn't really a patient, but he didn't want to say it out loud. He nodded again, and pulled his coat closer to his body.

"I don't regret anything," the woman said. "I guess that's a blessing."

On the far side of the road, Don saw Peggy getting out of a car, and he concentrated on her rather than let his mind make a list of his own regrets.

"Don!" she called at him as soon as she crossed, carrying a brown bag in one hand. "What are you doing out? It's freezing."

"Not enough for not smoking," he said, and he heard the old woman chuckle as she went back inside. He followed Peggy when she came in, and sat down in the waiting room a fair distance away from Henry.

"Here, it's spaghetti," she said, handing him the brownbag.

"I'm okay," he said. She didn't pull her hand back though, and continued to dangle the bag in front of him until he took it. He could smell tomato sauce over the harsh disinfectant of the hospital, and he realised he hadn't eaten anything all day.

"You look better," she said, while he opened the cardboard container.

"Thanks."

She remained beside him, and he thought of telling her she could go, that it was okay, only he didn't actually want to sit there and eat alone and then proceed to pick hospitals and doctors with Henry.

"I don't think she's crazy," he said.

"Do you think she might've taken…"

"She's not an addict, either. I've seen that. I know what it looks like. It doesn't happen like this, it's not so fast."

"What are the doctors saying?"

Don scoffed.

"That she's had a nervous breakdown. That she's psychotic," he shook his head. "They don't know her."

They both stared at their feet, silent among the hum and activity of the hospital. Don wanted her to say that everything was going to be fine, and for her to mean it, but he knew that even if she did he wouldn't believe it. It killed him to wonder if maybe this had always been there, inside of Sally, and he had just failed to notice, the same way none of them had noticed Mike Ginsberg going off the deep end.

"I'll be in the office tomorrow," Peggy said, and she slowly stood from her seat. She leaned down to embrace him, briefly, before stepping back again. "I'll talk to Meredith about taking your calls and rescheduling meetings, so don't worry about that."

He stared at her a moment, unsure of what to say. He wanted to know where Roger was, if he was going to show up or if he'd be left exposed, no longer able to avoid dealing with Henry and the doctors and all those decisions he felt completely unqualified to make.

"You should go home tonight," she said, looking down towards him. He imagined how he must look to her and he hated that he was now a case to feel sorry for. He straightened his back and kept his voice level and cool.

"I will," he said. "Thanks."

She turned to leave, and he found that he felt relieved that she wasn't watching him anymore, that he could slump down and stretch his leg and frown and not feel ashamed. He didn't want her pity and her fussing, it didn't make him feel any better. Yet, a few minutes after she was gone, he wished he wasn't alone again.

/

Saturday Morning, December 11, 1971

/

He was woken up sometime in the early morning by one of the nurses, and he dropped the can of tonic he'd been drinking to cheat himself into thinking it was alcohol. The nurse smiled at him only briefly, and then pointed back towards the main desk.

"There's a call for you," she said.

"How do you know it's for me?"

She simply nodded, and walked away. Don reached for his crutches and stood, his neck feeling cramped and his leg still throbbing, and if he wondered if by now all the nurses in that wing knew who he was. He had considered going home, but Henry had left for Rye and just the idea of being back in his apartment, to that torn apart door and that mess, it made him shiver.

He picked up the payphone by the reception, feeling the hair rise in the back of his neck. He didn't think he would ever be able to take a call from Henry and not fear the worst.

"I've gotten her an appointment with Dr. Peter Hirsch, out of Jersey. He's a neurologist."

Don let out the breath he was holding.

"When?"

"Today. Before eleven am, or he might not be able to get her a room."

"Before eleven? Henry, I can't drive. I don't even have a car."

"Get a driver. Hire a car, I don't know. Just handle it. I have to go."

"Wait. What hospital? Where in Jersey?"

"Princeton University. The boys will stay with my mother this weekend, you can call me there or at Betty's hospital."

He hung up, and Don kept the phone close to his ear but stopped just short of dialing a new number. He knew that if he called Peggy or Roger, even if he called Meredith, they would be able to solve this for him, but he didn't want them to suck them back into all this. He walked back and asked for a phone book, and called an airport cabby for a pick-up and drop-off. He got coffee from the cafeteria before heading back towards Sally's room, but he wasn't allowed to actually go in before he'd signed all the release papers that stated the hospital was not responsible for anything that happened to her from here on out.

He walked in, and found her lying down but awake. She was already in her own clothes, only missing her shoes.

"How are you feeling?" he asked. Absently, she fiddled with her hands.

"Fine," she said.

"How did you sleep?"

She moved her head up and and sideways, and looked around as though she also wanted the answer to that question.

"Sleep?" she muttered.

"Yes."

"I don't know. Can I go?"

Don took a deep breath.

"Yes. We're good to go. There's a car waiting for us outside."

She stood from her bed and Don saw her wobble a little before she steadied, then she walked out towards the door. She didn't ask if they were going home, or why they were leaving, or why she'd had to stay there. She simply followed him to the car with her vacant eyes fixed on the ground, and didn't say a word.

The driver of the car he'd called was a white-haired man from Jamaica, and he was gracious when Don asked him to turn off the radio. He got on the back with Sally but she remained still in her side, her head resting against the window, and she didn't move or speak for the two hours it took them to get to New Jersey. When the car stopped, though, and she looked out into a white and unfamiliar landscape, she stiffened in her seat and would not open her door.

"What is this? Why are we here?" she asked. Don got out and opened her side door.

"It's another hospital, Sally. A better one."

"Why? I feel fine."

"No, you don't. I know you don't, don't lie to me."

She stepped out of the car, and raised a hand to her face when the sun hit her, as though it was painful. She then walked alongside him towards the hospital doors, dragging her feet in the snow so that she left two long ridges.

"Sally, pick up your feet," he said. She nodded, but kept dragging her feet, so that they were soaked by the time they reached the cleared area. She was still faster than him, and she moved past the doors before he did and she stood there, waiting, until he joined her. A nurse came towards him and asked if he needed assistance, but he just shook his head and asked for the doctor Henry had recommended. They had to wait a while for him, sitting in a row of chairs in a hallway, and when a secretary finally called them into the man's office, the words "Psychiatric Department" were written below his name on his door.

The doctor was young, and well groomed, and his office was spotless and modern, with books with the same size and color of cover lining his shelves. They shook hands, and Don and Sally sat in side by side chairs in front of his desk while he reviewed the file Don had copied from the New York hospital, flicking through the pages way too fast to have actually read the thing. Then, when he looked up, he asked Sally what seemed to be the issue. She did not respond.

"I think it would be better if we spoke separately," Don said in a low voice. The doctor nodded.

"We will, but first I wanted to speak with the both of you."

"Well, as you can see, she's not speaking."

His voice was harsh and impatient - he was too tired to be civil. The doctor turned to Sally, and slowly, as though her mouth was made of lead, she spoke.

"I have sleeplessness," she said, her voice grave and gravelly. The doctor scribbled something in a page he'd added to her file and then he stood.

"Sally," he said. "Your father and I will talk for a moment. Are you okay to wait here?"

She didn't answer, but the doctor seemed to take that as a yes. Don stood as well and followed the man into an exam room right next to his office.

"Mr. Draper, what exactly is making you believe that this is not a psychological disorder?" he said, the moment the door was closed. Don swallowed hard.

"Did you read the file?" he asked.

"Yes. Seeing as alcohol and drugs have been ruled out, it seems pretty clear to me that we're dealing with some sort of psychological episode. She's the right age for onset of Schizophrenia, and Bipolar's disorder could also explain her behavior and periods of mania and depression."

"She's not depressed," Don said. "She was normal a month ago. She's seen a psychologist half her childhood, she can tell you she's never been like this before."

"I understand that it's a hard thing to digest, but these sort of disorders typically start to manifest in young adults. Auditory hallucinations in particular are a clear marker for Schizophrenia."

Don stood and turned.

"She's not crazy. She wouldn't just be normal one day and crazy the next, that doesn't happen."

"Mr. Draper, it's very likely she's been hiding these symptoms—"

"Isn't there anything else it could be? Is that the only thing?"

"Nothing that's any better, Mr. Draper. There is no better outcome for brain diseases. This can actually be managed."

"But it can't be cured."

"She can get her life back." The doctor stressed, and rubbed his forehead and peered at the door that separated them from Sally. "Look, I gave Henry Francis my word I'd run the tests, so I'll schedule her for an EEG and physical, and I'll do the neurological right now, but I can tell you already that it will be clear. After that with your consent she can be signed in to the psychiatric ward so she can begin treatment. If she responds to medications she shouldn't spend over five days there."

Left with no choice, Don nodded, and returned to the room where Sally seemed not to have moved since they left. She did not look up when they walked in, but turned when Don said they were going to go through some tests and nodded when he asked if she understood. The doctor led her into the exam room, where she sat down.

"Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions, okay?"

Sally nodded. The doctor lifted a small flashlight and pointed it to each of Sally's eyes.

"How old are you, Sally?"

"Sixteen."

"I'm going to give you an address, and you'll try and remember it, okay? It's 12 North Street. You got that?"

She nodded again.

"Do you know what hospital this is?"

"No."

"Do you knew in which state we're in?"

"New Jersey."

"Can you tell me who the president is?"

"Richard Nixon."

"Do you know how you got here today?"

Sally bit hard on her lip, and turned slightly towards Don.

"In a car," she said, after a few seconds. The doctor carried on, and handed her a piece of paper and a pen.

"Could you write me a sentence?"

"What sentence?"

"Just anything that comes to mind."

She took the pen, and after a moment's hesitation she scribbled something on the page. The doctor took it away before Don could read it, and then pointed towards the pen.

"Can you tell me what this is?"

"A pen."

"How about that?" he pointed towards a clock placed on a shelf.

"A clock."

"And what's beside the clock?"

She took a moment.

"Many things."

"But what specifically is right beside it."

"A book."

"Okay. Good. Now can you repeat this phrase after me? 'No ifs, ands or buts'"

"What?"

"'No ifs, ands or buts'"

"No ifs andsorbuts?"

"How about 'British Constitution'?"

It carried on for a while, the doctor eventually moving on to ask her to follow his fingers, point to her nose, walk in a line, and whether or not she felt pain or prickling sensations or vibrations. Sally seemed to tire towards the end and she stopped responding to the questions, but when Don caught the doctor's eyes he didn't seem to find that a cause for concern. Once they had finished, she complied silently for the physical examination, and only seemed to break out of her stupor when the nurses started to paste wires around her head.

"What are you doing?" she asked, and there was panic in her voice, but Don still felt his stomach turning at the sound of it. She hadn't sounded more like herself since before she came to stay with him.

"It's just a test, Sally," the doctor said. Sally turned towards Don, who stood a little apart.

"It won't hurt. They're just going to measure things," he said. She swallowed, and tears started flowing from her eyes.

"I don't want it."

"It'll be over before you know it." The doctors voice sounded forced and way too high, and he over pronounced every word.

"Don't talk to her like that," Don said. "She's not a child."

He pushed through the nurses to be able to face her.

"They're just trying to find out why you're feeling like this," he said to her, and her eyes followed him, huge and glassy. Somehow he was sure this was really her now.

"I'm not doing it on purpose," she said, and flinched when another wire was stuck to her head. Don touched her hand and this time she didn't pull away. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologise, Sally."

She sniffed, and Don felt a lump growing in his throat.

"I broke your leg," she said. The nurses stopped for a moment and the doctor stared at them both. Don shook his head a little harder than he needed to.

"No you didn't, Salamander," he said, choking. "That wasn't you."

The nurses finished, and asked him to step back. From the corner he watched as Sally's face gradually lost the redness of crying, and by the time the test was almost done she was fitful again, and the nurses had to hold her hands to keep her from pulling out the wires. She was strong, and it took several of them to restrain her.

"Sally, please, you need to let the doctors do their job," Don told her, hoping to get back the Sally he'd had just a moment before, but she was gone now.

"They can't shave my head. I don't want them to shave my head!"

"No one's going to shave your head."

"Mom would hate it."

"They're not—"

"She would hate me."

"Sally, that's not true—"

"Don't touch me!"

She yanked away the wires that were left, and jumped off the seat but lost her balance, and fell onto the tile floor. When Don leaned down to help her up she crawled away to a corner.

"Get away! Get away!"

A nurse grabbed Don's arm and led him to the door.

"Wait outside."

"No, I'm not—"

Sally pushed away the cabinet closest to her and it fell over, almost catching a nearby nurse. Don saw the doctor reach for a syringe.

"No, don't!"

"Sir, wait outside! She needs to be sedated before she hurts herself."

"She doesn't need sedation, you need-"

They pushed him out, and he lost balance past the door and fell back, taking down the nearest nurse with him. His cast hit the ground hard and he saw black for a moment, then when his vision cleared he found the door closed and the room silent. He raised himself up on his elbows and through the glass slit of the door he saw Sally, unconscious, being lowered onto a gurney. Moments later the doctor walked out, holding the crutch he'd left behind in the room and offering him a hand. Don took the crutch but not the hand.

"That wasn't necessary," he said. The doctor held a roll of graph paper, and he seemed to be struggling to control his temper.

"Mr. Draper," he said. "It's perfectly clean. You will only become part of the problem here if you refuse to acknowledge this as a psychological disorder."

"What about the other test? That's not normal, that's not the way she talks."

"A schizoaffective disorder could explain most of her symptoms. The rest are probably caused by stress, trauma, or as a side effect from the sedatives."

"Trauma? What trauma?"

"Weren't you both involved in a car crash recently?

Don scoffed.

"Didn't you read the file? She was like this before the crash! She goddamn caused it!"

"It's not clear whether her physical and speech issues were present before then."

"So you're saying it's unrelated?"

The doctor went on to try and explain him how schizophrenia worked, how it manifested, how it was treated, and Don listened for a while and then just hung from his crutches, head turned towards where he'd last seen Sally. He got caught up with the words 'full recovery', and when they handed him the form he had to sign for her to be signed in, he signed, and felt like a traitor.

"They say she has schizophrenia," he told Henry on the phone, his voice tired and rough. "She's in the psych ward. They have put her on anti-psychotic drugs and they'll evaluate how she reacts to it."

"Have you seen her?"

"They don't allow visits for the first five days. I'm… I'm going home."

He took a taxi back to Manhattan and slept most of the way there, but once he was back in his apartment, among the mess and the loose screws of Sally's door, he couldn't rest. It was Saturday evening already, two full days since he'd been back there, and yet everything in that place seemed strange to him. Was it really his home, that place? Had he even been happy there, at any point? He re-screwed the door to the wall and put every cabinet back where it had been, then he showered and changed into a suit, and went down to get a taxi to the office.


	7. Chapter 7

/

PEGGY

Sunday Morning, December 12, 1971

/

Peggy got on the elevator of the McCann office building with three other employees, but she was the only out in her floor. It was Sunday morning, but she still had a lot of catching up to do, both with her own work and Don's. The creative directors had decided to divide his accounts between the team directly under him, but that had not yet been implemented so until their next meeting on Monday afternoon, the burden fell on Peggy.

She made herself coffee in the little hallway kitchenette, and headed back to her office passing by the empty cubicles. McCann was never empty in the weekends, but that day there was no one else in her floor and she liked the silence. It reminded her a little of how it had been at SCDP, which seemed like so long ago now. It had all changed so much, and so many times, and yet she still found herself expecting to run into Pete, or Ken Cosgrove, or Joan. Besides Don, the only person from those early days that she saw on a regular basis was Freddie — all the others were gone.

She reviewed research on two of her accounts, and made notes on them, before moving on to the new ones, but Meredith hadn't given her the files. Still drinking her coffee, she took the inner stairs up two floors and headed for Don's office. When she opened the door, her mug flew from her hand and she screamed.

"Jesus!"

Don, lying on his couch in a wrinkled suit that was too tight around his cast, raised himself up to look at her.

"What are you doing here, Peggy?"

"I didn't know you were — why are you —?"

"I was taking a nap. Thanks for waking me," he said, irony in his voice. Peggy leaned down and started picking bits of ceramic off the carpet. The whole room now smelled of coffee.

"I was picking up your files for Fanta and Oreo... Did you spend the night here?"

"No."

They both knew that was a lie.

"I didn't know you'd be back so soon. I asked Meredith to file for your vacation time."

She wanted to ask why he was there, what had happened, but she was too afraid to do it.

"Don't worry about that," he said, and he stiffly stood up and grabbed one of his crutches. "Just catch me up and I'll take it from there. Could- Just wait for me a moment."

He got out, and Peggy was sure he'd been just about to ask her for some coffee. She smiled thinking of the time when that was normal, and she fought the urge to stand and help him. He made his way back to the office, eventually, balancing a cup while he walked sort of sideways, and Peggy took it from him and set it on the table.

They worked until lunch without so much as chatting about anything other than the accounts, but Peggy carefully counted how many cigarettes were smoked, how he frowned and jumped at the ringing phones. When he folded up the paperwork and she stood to return to her office, she stared for a little too long and he turned away.

"Stop looking at me like that," he said. "I'm fine."

She felt like she was owed a bit more honesty than that, but she didn't push for it.

"Will you come in tomorrow?"

"Yes, I will. You don't have to stay today, Peggy, I can finish up."

Like Hell. There was no way she was leaving without knowing.

"How is Sally doing?" She asked, and noticed his shoulders tightening but his voice remained composed.

"She will be staying at the neurology wing in a hospital in Princeton. They're checking how she responds to medication and I can't visit until next Friday."

"Do they know what—"

"Schizophrenia," he said quickly, and stood up. "I don't want gossip, Peggy, okay? You helped me and I'm thankful, but I'm tired. I don't want to have a conversation about it."

"Okay."

"Go home. I'll stay."

Peggy nodded, and gathered her files and left his office. She still wanted to work on them, but she didn't return to his floor and instead she went for the elevator and took her files with her.

/

"Sally can't have the same thing as Mike," she announced the minute Stan walked through her door with two boxes of Chinese take out.

"Jesus. At least let me sit down," he said, and set the boxes in her counter. "I paid the delivery guy. Don't you think this is a bit much?"

"No. I'm hungry."

"What was that about Sally again?"

Stan set down their food in plates and handed her one.

"Don was at the office today. Says they've committed her after all."

"Oh." He sat down. "Wow."

"But it doesn't make any sense… I mean, the more I think about Mike, the more I'm convinced that he was always like that. He was always a bit… unhinged. He just reached a breaking point one day, but it wasn't out of the blue."

"But Peggy, we saw Ginsberg every day. You've only met Sally a few times."

"The very first day I met Mike, I thought he was crazy. I never thought that about Sally."

"She's young. Maybe it works different then."

"Ugh." She rested back against her seat and started eating. "I guess it could be worse," she said. "She could have cancer or something awful like Mad Cow Disease."

"You can get that from cheap Chinese food, you know."

"No you can't!"

They both chuckled, and Peggy left her empty plate in the coffee table.

"God. I can't believe I'm laughing about this."

"We're human," Stan said. "It's the way we deal."

/

DON

Wednesday Night, December 15, 1971

/

The updates he got from Sally's assigned case worker were brief, and seemed intentionally vague. On Sunday she was restless and had trouble communicating. On Monday she was still struggling with sleeping but seemed calmer and on Tuesday she was pacing again. They would never let him speak to her though, and even to get those meager bits of information he had to basically wrangle them out of the case worker. On Wednesday's update, which came late, he finally lost his patience.

"There have been setbacks with her progress."

"What setbacks?" What progress?

"She has been uncooperative with the staff."

"In what way? I want to know what happened."

"I'm sorry, the details are..."

"What? Do you not know what happened? Do you have a fixed set of lines that you can say, is that it?"

"Sir, please, there's no need to —"

"What happened? Just tell me."

The case worker sighed.

"She has been refusing food and medication."

"So she's not getting the medicine?"

"Oh, uh... No, she is still getting the meds. Just not with her cooperation."

"So, what? You're forcing them down her throat?"

"No, sir, they are intra-muscular injections."

Don crumpled the rolodex card he'd been holding, and thought about slamming down the phone.

"I want to talk to her."

"I'm sorry, that's not possible at the moment."

"Well, tomorrow's day five. I'm going there, and if I can't see her then I'm getting her out."

"You can't—"

He hung up, and pushed his phone off the table. It was late in the day and Meredith wasn't at her desk, so she couldn't barge in and ask what was wrong. He suddenly wished she would, and then scratched that thought. He just wished there was someone there bearing this with him, someone even just to shout at or assign blame or fight with, as he was sure would've happened if Betty had not been sick. She would've fought and blamed him, and he would've fought and blamed her, and they would've hated each other all over again but at least there would be another person there who knew how all this felt. And Sally would have someone else waiting on her and complaining on her behalf...

He straightened up and picked up his phone and dialled again. A sleepy Henry picked up on the other end.

"Don, please, you can't keep calling like this."

"I just need a number, Henry. That boys school, the one close to Sally's, do you know what it's called?"

Henry sighed.

"Is this about that boy, Pat?"

"I just want to talk to him."

"He's not in high school anymore. He's a freshman at Emerson College."

"Is that in New York?"

"Boston."

"Boston? How did they even meet?"

Henry sighed.

"I don't know. She never said. Theater maybe? The boy's in a troupe or something like that."

Don cursed.

"Well, do you know his last name?"

"I... He mentioned it, I don't remember. I'm sure his name is Patrick. Can't you ask Sally...?"

"They don't let me talk to her. I'll try tomorrow. Could you put Bobby through?"

"He's asleep. It's late, I was asleep too."

"But do you have any contact information? Hasn't he called for her?"

"No. Go home, Don."

He stared at the phone a long time, then he got out of the office and started searching through Meredith's desk.

"Are you looking for something, Mr. Draper?" Another late working secretary spoke from a few desks over. Don dropped the wad of papers he was holding.

"Yes, I... I need to find the number for a call I made."

"Did Meredith dial it, or did you did?"

"Uh... I did."

"You'll have to get in touch with one of the girls in accounting. They can probably get you a list of your calls from the bills."

"Are they in right now?"

"I don't think so, no."

He gritted his teeth and got back into his office, he placed his things back into his briefcase, ready to leave, but he paused a moment next to the phone. He opened up the phone book and looked for Emerson College, and he searched through six pages of the letter E before realising it was a New York phone book. He called for operator assistance and asked to be transferred station-to-station, and after several ringing tones he managed to get ahold of someone from the administrative office, who in turn gave him a number for the office in charge of housing. He couldn't get anyone there to pick up, but three more calls later he managed to get an address for the men's dormitory: 134 Beacon Street, Back Bay, Boston. He was already imagining himself on the road again, getting away in the name of a most likely fruitless mission, but then he remembered his car was still in the workshop, and he couldn't drive.

He let go of the phone and didn't look at it this time as he left, but halfway home he asked the cabbie to turn away towards Penn station. He bought a ticket for the first train leaving for Boston, and he laid down on two seats while he waited.

/

Thursday Morning, December 16, 1971

/

It had not snowed for a couple of days and back in New York the streets were already mostly clear, but in Boston cars were buried under white mountains of it in every corner, there was but a narrow and compacted trail in the middle of every sidewalk, and walking around in crutches was a slow and painful process. He was thankful for them, however, when he knocked on the dormitory in Beacon Street and was let right in by a concerned lady.

"You need a better winter coat, sir," she said, and looked down at his single, soaked through leather shoe. "And proper boots…"

"Thanks, I'll see to that," he said.

"Stand over there, that's were the heating comes in."

He smiled and obliged, and remained still for a while under a blast of warm air that melted the frost from the rim of his hat. The woman went to stand over a desk with letter boxes behind it, and beyond he could see a half open door leading to a TV room. She caught him staring, and opened a log book.

"So, for whom are you here for?" she said.

"For Patrick."

"Which Patrick?"

He froze, and thought of making something up, but he couldn't think of any reason why he'd be looking for someone who's last name he didn't know. She seemed to notice his hesitation, and she closed her book.

"Are you a family member?"

"No," he said. "I'm not."

"Then may I ask what exactly is your business at this residence?"

Don sighed.

"I'm looking for a boy called Pat, who's in a theater group. He's a friend of my daughter, and I really need to speak with him."

The woman eyed him curiously for a moment, and she seemed to rest her eyes a bit longer on the glass cuts still visible in his face.

"And do you have confirmation that he lives in this dormitory?"

"I don't. I just know he's a freshman at Emerson."

"Is this some sort of emergency?"

Don looked down, and gripped hard at the handles of his crutches.

"My daughter's hospitalised in New Jersey. I believe he is, or at least was, her boyfriend."

"Oh…" The woman sighed, and Don was sure that she would help him, even if she wasn't supposed to. "What is your daughter's name?"

"Sally Draper."

She nodded, and pointed him towards the TV room beyond the entrance.

"Most of the boys are home for the Christmas break," she said. "But I'll see what I can find out. You can wait there, I'll have someone get you some coffee."

"Thank you."

The room was empty and the TV was off, so he lied down on the corner couch and closed his eyes, and when he opened them again there was a cold cup of coffee in the centre table. Two twenty somethings, sitting in the opposite couch, were staring at him.

"You okay, man?" One of them asked, and they looked at him like those car racing kids who gave him a lift to LA had looked at him. He wondered if he was ever going to feel respected again.

"Yeah, just a long train ride," he said. The boys chuckled.

"You looked dead for a moment."

He sat up and looked back towards the woman's desk, but she still wasn't there, and so he turned towards the boys.

"Are you freshmen?" He asked.

"No," they said at once, as though it were obvious.

"Are any of you into theatre?"

"Dave is. Aren't you, Dave?" One of them teased.

"I'm not anymore," Dave said.

"Yeah, right. He's a film major now."

"Theatre's not good enough for him."

"Well, I'm looking for a freshman called Patrick, who's in a theatre group."

"It's called a troupe."

"Yes, that. Do you know him?"

"Nope, sorry. There's no Patrick in the troupe."

"Well, do you know any freshmen called Patrick?"

"I don't know any freshmen that are not from the troupe. There's a Pat that's a freshman, but his name's not Patrick."

"What's his name then?"

"Patterson. Some call him Pat."

Don's eyes widened.

"Are you his friend?"

"Yeah, kinda. I mean, I'm not in the troupe anymore..."

"Oh, so you were in the troupe..."

"Shut up!" Don said, leaving the other boys stunned, and he turned back towards Dave. "Do you know if he was going out with someone? He ever talk of a girl?"

The kid frowned.

"Why do you want to know that, man? Is he in trouble?"

"Are you from the mob?" Another asked.

"No, I'm not from the mob. Did he talk to you about a girl or not?"

"Well, yeah, he was seeing someone from New York. He's from Greenwich. He bragged that she was from Manhattan..."

Don stood up just in time for the woman from the desk to walk back in.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't–"

"It's Patterson," he said. "Not Patrick." He turned back. "What's his first name?"

"Charles."

"Charles Patterson."

"He doesn't live here, though. He's at 100 Beacon, and he's probably home already," Dave said. Don cursed and followed the woman out, then asked if he could use her phone.

/

Five hours later, a cab was driving him down a snowy suburban street in Greenwich, Connecticut, and it had to leave him a block away so that it would be able to make a u turn. He grabbed both crutches in one hand and jumped on one leg using them as a cane, and made his way up to a drive-in thinking about what he was going to say. Would they invite him in? Would they let their son go with him? Did they know about Sally and would they believe him? And how on earth was he going to go back anyway? He'd have to call another car... He should've paid the man to stay and wait for him.

He knocked, and waited. He'd ask for Charles. If they pressed for a motive, he'd say he was a parent at his school. That he needed to talk about a fellow student, that it was urgent, nothing wrong, jut urgent.

The door was opened without anyone asking first who it was, and a boy of around eighteen with bright red hair stared back at him as if he were a ghost. Don cleared his throat.

"I... I'm sorry, I'm—"

"You're Sally's dad," the boy said, and Don let his shoulders drop in both relief and dread, because the boy seemed horrified to see him.

"You're Pat?"

He nodded quickly and swallowed back.

"She said not to call at Rye because she wasn't going to be there, but she didn't leave a number for your house... I knew something would happen."

"Why do you say that?"

"Charlie! Who is it?"

The boy turned back, holding back a breath.

"It's just Danny!"

"Is he staying for dinner?"

Pat turned towards Don, who shook his head.

"Say you're leaving."

"I…"

"Sally's in the hospital, I need to talk to you."

"What hospital? Are we going there?"

"Do you have a car?"

"I can borrow my mom's but I'll have to tell her…"

"Just say you're leaving with your friend, is that so hard?"

"He lives next door, why would I take the car?"

"Charlie?" the mother called again, and Pat turned towards Don, pleading.

"Just come in. I can tell them to leave us so we can talk, where it's not freezing."

Don hesitated, and one of his hands went to touch the scabs in his face. Did these people know Sally? She wouldn't want him there, he was sure of it.

"I can't stay," he said, but Pat was already pulling him in, and while he shook the frost off his hat and hung his coat, he went forwards towards a living room. Without moving from beside the door he heard him taking back his previous lie. He approached, cautiously, and emerged into a room where two young girls were sitting down in front of the TV, and the one who was clearly their mother was standing talking to Pat in a hushed voice.

"…but why is he here?"

"Sally's sick. He wanted to talk."

"Sick? What's wrong?"

"I don't know, mom, we haven't talked yet."

"Is he staying? Is his car in the driveway? Your father should be home soon…"

Pat turned as he saw him coming, and his mother fidgeted a second before coming forward and shaking his hand.

"I'm Don. I came on the train, there's no car," he said.

"Train? From New York?"

Don looked down.

"From Boston, actually."

"Boston?"

"I went to Emerson, they gave me your address."

"Couldn't Sally…?" Pat asked, but Don shook his head and he turned pale and didn't finish. The three were silent a moment, then Pat's mother rubbed her hands together and stepped back.

"I'll make some coffee…" She turned to the two girls still in the living room. "Turn that off, go upstairs."

"Why?"

"Go. Upstairs."

Don sat down where the girls had been once they both left, and after a moment so did Pat. They could hear his mother moving stuff around in the kitchen and Don guessed she could hear them, but at least she wasn't visible.

"What happened?" Pat asked him with a shaky voice, and Don explained the accident with the car and the record store.

"Can I go see her?"

"She's hospitalised right now, no visits." Don said. "The doctors insist it's a psychiatric disorder, that it's all in her head."

"She's not crazy. She might be the most sane girl I know."

"But something was wrong. You knew that, didn't you?"

"She never did anything like what you said. It doesn't sound like her at all."

"But she did say something was happening. I heard her saying it to you on the phone."

"I…" Pat looked around, unsure. "I don't think she'd want—"

"I've just made a round trip to Boston, I haven't slept in two days. Please."

"Well, it was… Look, I don't see Sally while I'm at Emerson, but this term I have a play I'm rehearsing for with my old group. So sometimes when I'm here I go pick her up from her school. I know it's not exactly allowed… We'd just go to the movies, it wasn't—"

"Pat, I don't care what you did."

"Well, I… It was just this one thing. The last time I came here, about three weeks ago, I picked her up. And she was totally normal at first, then while we were driving back here she just started talking nonsense."

"What nonsense?"

"I don't remember exactly, but there was something about how the lights were all off and no one could see us, and we were going to crash and die? I tried asking her what she was on about, and it was like she couldn't hear me. She kept going until I stopped at a gas station, and she gets out saying she's going to get some snacks and then doesn't come back." He paused, and his eyes avoided Don's. "So I go in to get her, and she was standing in front of a shelf just staring at nothing. I go up to her, she turns to look at me, and she asks me what am I doing there. She couldn't even remember my last call, when I said I'd pick her up."

"Did you tell her about it?"

"Not immediately. I waited until we got to the parking lot. She denied it, then she started crying and said something was happening to her, that she couldn't think and she wasn't in control. She said she felt ill."

"Did it ever happen again?"

"No. I didn't really see her that much after that, but that weekend… I don't know how to explain it but it was like she wasn't her. It wasn't… It wasn't stress, it wasn't sadness. She also wouldn't listen to music anymore, which was weird. She promised she would talk to you about this but then on the phone she said—"

"What?"

"She said she couldn't trust you."

Don looked down. In his mind, he saw Sally slam her hands against his car window, screaming, and then he saw her open the door.

"I have a license. I can drive to the hospital right now," Pat said.

Don nodded, and Pat stood and disappeared into the kitchen. As soon as the door was opened, Don smelled coffee and felt his eyes burning and threatening to droop. He barely heard the exchange that went on inside, and only lifted his head when a warm mug was placed between his hands. Pat's mom smiled at him.

"Would you like an aspirin?" she said. He felt like it was the kindest thing he'd heard all day.

"Yes. Thank you."

She handed him a pill seconds later, and then she held out her car keys towards Pat, keeping her hold on them for a moment.

"Put on the chains."

The way she looked at him, there seemed to be a lot more being said than that simple instruction.

"Sure."

Don finished his coffee while Pat went outside to put on the snow chains, and the two girls returned and sat in the couch beside him, their eyes fixed on the TV but occasionally casting glances his way.

"Ready to go?" Pat opened the door and removed his hat, which had flecks of white stuck to it.

"Don't tell me it's snowing again."

"Just barely. It won't be a problem."

Pat held the door for him while he stepped out and then jumped back towards the car in the unplowed driveway. The car was an Oldsmobile, and it looked like it had only just recently been dug up from under the snow. Music blasted from the stereo as soon as Pat hit the ignition, but he lowered it down to almost nothing and got out of the snow, back into the road.

"The hospital's in Princeton. There's a medical centre, near the university. You know how to get there?"

"I know how to get to Newark."

"Great. Head towards Newark, and then keep on South."

Pat didn't hit the gas hard, and Don raised the collar of his coat and leaned against the passenger seat window. He could still hear the low hum of soft rock playing in the radio, but it proved strangely soothing, and it didn't take long for him to fall asleep.

/

Thursday Night, December 16, 1971

/

"Hey. Hey."

He stirred, then lifted his head, flinching. Opening his eyes, he saw the flashing lights of the ambulances, parked in front of the hospital doors.

"We're here."

Don unglued his face from the window and straightened up.

"This is the ER entrance. We need to go through the other door."

Pat turned the car and parked in the handicapped spot, so the walk to the main entrance was a short one, but still once inside Don refused the wheelchair that was offered to him. They took the lift to the fourth floor and walked down a hallway of closed doors to the nurses station of the hospital's psychiatric ward.

"Wait here," he told Pat, pointing to some chairs just past the door, and he approached the desk and asked for Sally.

"Just a moment, sir."

The nurse walked past a red line marked on the floor, past a door, and for a few seconds, while it closed behind her, Don could see a long line of rooms with charts hanging from them. He let his shoulders drop into the crutches so his weight rested on them and not on his foot, and he rocked slowly from side to side while he waited.

"I'm sorry, she's not up for visits yet," the nurse said when she returned. Don turned towards the closing door again, and swore he caught a glimpse of Sally's head quickly retreating back inside a room.

"They told me five days. Today's day five."

"That's right sir, so you should be allowed in tomorrow."

"That's ridiculous."

"It's hospital policy, sir."

"I am her father. I should be allowed to at least talk to her."

"I'm sorry, but that's not possible."

His hands tightened into fists and he thought about throwing something, anything, against that desk. He pulled his hair back and tried to keep his voice steady.

"Look," he said. "She shouldn't be here. I'm taking her out. Give me whatever I need to sign and I'll sign it, but she's getting out tonight."

The nurse looked unsure, and she turned to look at the other nurse organising the files. They both looked at him with something like fear in their eyes.

"I'm sorry sir, but when she was admitted you signed—

There was a loud crash coming from the hallway behind the red line, and the door Don had been looking through was pushed open with such force the knob cracked a tile in the wall. A scream, followed by shouts by the staff, echoed in the waiting room, and Don felt nausea tingling under his tongue. Pat stood right up from his seat and came to stand beside him.

"Was that…?"

The nurses both left for the hallway and started to close the door, but they weren't fast enough. Sally, wearing flimsy looking scrubs, bursted from beyond the door pushing a metal cart like the kind used to move food around, and used it to push her way past the nurses and orderlies towards the waiting area like a battering ram. Her hair was shorter, like it had been when she was younger, and it stood on end, dirty and matted. She looked thinner, gaunt even, and eerily pale under the white lights.

"Sally!" Don called, but she didn't hear or if she did, she didn't respond. She kept at her mad dash towards the red line, and when she crossed it, she let go of the food cart and it crashed and broke against the desk in the nurses' station. She got behind it and cowered in the corner, using it as a shield.

Don climbed over the desk so that he could look at her but she recoiled at the sight of him. Her face was red, as though she had cried, and there was a raw terror in her eyes he'd never seen before.

"Sally. Sally, it's me, listen to me. "

She turned to look at him.

"I'm not going back," she said, in a hushed voice that rang true to him.

"You're not going back. I'm getting you out. It's okay."

"Stand back!" A doctor, breathing hard from running, came to the desk and approached it from where Don was leaning over it. "Sir, please stand back. She needs to be sedated."

Don turned.

"Is that what you've been doing to her for five days? Keeping her sedated?"

"Sir, she is a danger to herself and to others."

"No, she's not. She's sick."

"She is under the care of this ward, sir, if you don't cooperate, I'll have to—"

"Get away from me!" Sally's shrill screaming made them both turn, and they saw her scrambling away from the nurse that was trying to get past her metal cart barricade. Staggering, she tore the back of her scrubs but managed to slip away past the desk behind a tall shelf.

"Sally, calm down," Don said. "You're coming with me, we're getting you out."

She stopped moving, and peered out from a gap in the shelves, towards Don, the doctor, and the nurses.

"I don't believe you," she said, shaking her head. "You're lying."

"I'm not. I'm not lying. Look, even Pat's here. We came to take you out."

Her eyes darted back towards Pat, who was pale and frozen in place. She shook her head again.

"No. You're lying. You put me here."

Don met her eyes.

"I'm so sorry."

He walked around the desk and started approaching her, leaving behind the crutches and limping slowly around the mess of knocked down files and charts. He rounded the big shelf Sally was cowering behind, and slowly emerged into the small space between the shelves and the wall she had wedged herself into.

"Please come out," he said. She looked up at him and burst out crying, shaking all over and looking as though she might fall. Don closed the distance between them in a second, but when he touched her she pulled away and started screaming again.

"Don't touch me!"

"Sally it's me, it's fine…"

He tried again, but she shoved him hard against the shelf, toppling it over the desk so that now the doctors and nurses couldn't reach them. Don fell with the shelf and then slipped to the ground.

"You're lying to me. You're always lying to me."

Don got up on his hands and knees and looked into her eyes, which saw but didn't see, and he didn't know what to say. She remained where she stood, silent and still for a moment while the nurses struggled to move the shelves and cabinets out of the way, but her right hand, clutching the broken handle of the food cart, was shaking. Soon it got so bad she dropped it, and she brought both her hands to her face and squeezed hard at her cheeks, sobbing.

"None of this is real."

Don felt tears running down his eyes but he didn't move. Sally kept her face covered, but when the sobs subsided she looked back at the crowd of hospital staff that had now formed beyond them. She then lowered her eyes, towards Don, and her muscles seemed to stiffen.

"What have they done to me?"

Her voice sounded uneven, as though it was hard for her to speak, and she seemed to notice this as her hands shifted to cover her mouth. A groan escaped her and then, as though she'd been shocked with electricity, she jerked upright and then dropped to the littered floor besides Don, shaking from some sort of fit.

The nurses rushed in then, dragging back the metal shelves that had been separating them.

"Sir, please, move out of the way."

But he stayed on his knees, on the floor, and didn't move, unable to pull his eyes away from Sally. They held her down, stuck a needle in her and she finally stopped jerking, then they took her away in a stretcher, but even after she was gone beyond the doors where he could no longer see her, he stayed where he was, broken leg stretched out to the side, and didn't even try to stand. He might've stayed there all night if Pat had not forced him back up.

/


	8. Chapter 8

/

DR. ERIC FOREMAN

Neurologist

Friday Morning, December 17, 1971

/

As soon as he opened the door to diagnostics, Thirteen looked up from the table and stretched towards him a piece of note paper.

"You're late. A Peter Hirsch from neurology has called five times for you already."

He grabbed the note, which read simply: 'need to confirm epilepsy, call back, urgent'.

"Hirsch is an idiot," he said, and dismissed the note. "Is House here?"

"Not yet."

"Then I'm not late." He sat down. "You're early. We don't even have a patient."

"Is Hirsch the ECT guy?" Thirteen asked. Foreman scoffed.

"Yeah. Calls himself a neuropsychologist now. The man's a butcher."

"Who's a butcher?" House walked in, and dropped down at the head of the table, then raised his feet up on the nearest chair. The phone started ringing, and though both Foreman and Thirteen reached for it, House lifted it first.

"Diagnostics, state your business!" he said, then hmm'd a couple of times. "Oh yes, Dr. Foreman is here."

"House, don't—"

"He's free at the moment."

He handed Foreman the receiver.

"You should've found me a case," he whispered, and Foreman took the phone with a frown.

"Dr. Foreman speaking."

"It's Hirsch, from neurology." As he expected. "I've been calling since last night. I have a sixteen year old girl, three seizures so far, but no history before being admitted. I diagnosed Schizophrenia a week ago, and she was on anti-psychotics before the first seizure happened but not anymore. Then she got the second and third while on phenytoin, both earlier today."

"You should still be able to confirm with an EEG."

"We did one before the first seizure, it was clear. Second one was not, but the patient was uncooperative and we couldn't finish. It's still pretty clear to me we're dealing with epilepsy."

"I'm not sure how I can help you, then."

"Well, she has not responded to medication so far. We still need to try her on phenobarbital but I'm not sure it will have any effect if she's already unresponsive to sedatives. I suggested ECT and surgery to the family, but they are demanding a second opinion. I'd ask Adler but he's on leave."

Foreman nodded. As they should.

"I'll be there."

"After your clinic hours," House added. Foreman pulled the phone a bit further away.

"Thank you," Hirsch said.

Foreman hung up, and shook his head.

"So who's Hirsch going to brain-fry now?" House asked, and started playing with a plush baseball.

"No one, if I can help it," Foreman said. "I don't know why he still works here. The man had one cured patient and suddenly everyone forgets he's been frying brains and turning kids into vegetables for over a decade, it's a disgrace."

"Says the guy who wanted his job."

"I didn't want his job. If anything, he wants my job. And he's a total fraud, he just told me he diagnosed a girl with Schizophrenia after a week. He's not even a psychiatrist!"

"And now he's asking for your help. Now, doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?"

Foreman scowled at his boss, and started to stand, but then the door was opened again, and the two remaining team members walked in with blue files under their arms.

"Anything interesting there?" House said. Foreman sat back down, his mouth a thin line, and Chase started going through the main points in the files. One by one, House dismissed them, throwing them into an ever growing pile of discards until there was nothing left to review. Sighing, Foreman stood from the table.

"Let me know when we have a case," he said.

"You know, you may be the honorary boss of those three, but I'm still your boss. Non-honorary, that is."

Foreman said nothing, and headed for the door.

"Don't forget about the clinic hours!"

/

Foreman walked down a narrow hallway towards Hirsch's office, but before he got there he saw through the glass panel in a door, a girl lying in a bed with her eyes fixed on that window. Past that hallway, in a waiting area, a man with greasy hair and a leg in a cast was lying over three seats, sleeping, and a younger guy looked up at him as he passed by. There was no one else there, so he guessed this was the only opposition Hirsch was up against.

"Dr. Foreman, thanks for meeting me," Hirsch said, and shook his hand once he came in. Foreman was surprised by the formality - any other day he would've just called him by his last name. He sat down in front of him, and Hirsch handed him a file. "Like I said, everything seems to point to epilepsy combined with a schizoaffective disorder, which is not unheard of. Her family, however, is still unwilling to sign on for the full treatment."

"That's the people I saw out there?" Foreman asked. Hirsch nodded.

"Her father, yes. There is also a stepfather, who's the one who reached out to me to take her case, but he's not here at the moment. The girl's mother is terminally ill."

Foreman started going through the pages, which listed a series of outbursts and accidents, as well as the results of physical and neurological examinations. Several things caught his attention — speech difficulties, erratic blood pressure, slow eye tracking…

"She's about to be switched to phenobarbital, and we will be altering doses and see how she goes. The father, however, is refusing to have her readmitted at the psychiatric wing, and I don't have the capacity or the nursing staff for her to stay here."

"Is neurology within the psych ward now?" Foreman asked.

"There are no neurology beds, and she also has a psych issue. It's the only place she can be. Phenobarbital will most likely prove ineffective since the sedatives have not even managed to keep her asleep, so the next course of action will have to be either ECT here or surgery at the Yale centre. Otherwise she'll need to be moved to a mental institution."

"Temporal lobe epilepsy could explain her psych issues."

"There was an EEG done just before she had a breakdown, it was clear, and there's been no fever or injury, blood work was clear."

"What about secondary infections?"

"Nothing in the history."

"Partial seizures are most likely to present psychotic states following the fit—"

"As far as we're concerned, there have been three psychotic breaks, and two whole weeks of disturbed behavior before she even had her first seizure. She spent five days in the ward under observation, I can assure you, there were no seizures. The mental issues are unrelated."

Foreman crossed his arms.

"So, do you want me to add my signature to yours, or do you want me to talk to the father?"

"Look, if there was ever a case in which ECT had merit…"

Looking at the file, it seemed to Foreman that there was a hell of a lot more going on than what epilepsy could explain.

"I'll talk to him. But I won't sign along on electro convulsive therapy unless there is no response to any medication and she's had a positive EEG done. I'd also like to do another neuro and physical."

Hirsch's face twisted, and he looked about to protest, but he seemed to understand that Foreman wasn't negotiating.

"Sure. The father's outside in the waiting room, the patient's in room 410."

Foreman stood and left without shaking Hirsch's hand again.

/

In the waiting room, the father was still sleeping, but the kid beside him was drinking coffee from a paper cup, and there was another full one resting on the floor.

"I'm sorry. Are you here for Sally Draper?" he asked. The kid looked towards the sleeping man and seemed unsure whether he should wake him up or not.

"Yeah, I... You should talk to him."

Foreman looked down at the man's leg. The cast over it was dirty and the pants around it were in tatters; he looked as though he had not changed or washed in days.

"Are you family?" He could be a brother, but there wasn't much of a resemblance.

"Uh... No. Sally is... I'm her boyfriend. Are you also her doctor?"

"No, not yet. Dr. Hirsch just called me in to confirm his diagnosis."

The kid scoffed.

"Dr. Hirsch says she's crazy."

"Well, if she had a seizure disorder, that could explain some of her personality issues."

"Would it explain it happening a month before she had the seizure?"

The kid stared hard at him, and Foreman had to look away. In the seats beside them the man started to stir, then in one swift movement he straightened, with a gasp, as though awakened by a loud eyes were wild and disoriented, and the kid placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Mr. Draper, another doctor's here."

The man looked up at Foreman, then breathed out and rubbed at his eyes. The kid leaned down to get the coffee from the floor and he placed it in the man's hand. Foreman noticed the skin in his knuckles was scraped and scarring, and the side of his face was also covered in half healed cuts. The bags under his eyes were black and bulging.

"Thanks, Pat," he said, in a grave voice, and he drank a bit of the coffee before again making eye contact with Foreman. "You're the second opinion?"

"Yes. I'm Dr. Foreman."

"And?"

"And what...?"

"And do you also think she's insane? Do you also think she should be shocked? Erased? Have half her brain removed?"

"I haven't examined her yet..."

"Well, that's great—"

"I will, shortly. But I have read her files and I had some questions for you."

"I don't think there's anything you can ask me that's not already in there."

Foreman sighed, and waited for him to finish his coffee before he sat down beside him. He could tell right away that he would get nothing if he pushed too much.

"You say the changes in behaviour started about a month from now. Is that right?"

"Yes."

"Did she ever complain of physical symptoms?"

"I've already mentioned this to the other doctor."

"It would help, sir, if I could hear them first hand."

"I'm NOT going to sign for her to be electroshocked!" The sudden loudness of his voice made Foreman pull himself a little further away. "I'll tear those papers and get her out of here myself if I have to hear this again."

"I'm not suggesting electroshock, Mr. Draper," he said, keeping his voice smooth. "I'm actually here to analyse all other possibilities. Dr. Hirsch might not have paid as much attention to the other symptoms and it would be helpful if you could fill in that blank."

The man took a few breaths before speaking again.

"Well, she was… At first, she wasn't sleeping. Red eyes. Hollow face. She did things and then didn't remember doing them."

"Did what things?"

The man didn't look at him.

"Like climbing out of a fire escape. Getting up in the middle of the night to open every window. Trashing a record store."

Foreman nodded.

"Did these issues seemed to happen in flares, or was it continuous?"

"There were moments in which she seemed normal, but the last week before she came here, it was continuous. She spoke strangely, wrote nonsense, or would just stare at nothing and not respond. Wouldn't eat much. Yesterday, when she had the fit, one of her hands was shaking."

"Which hand?"

The man frowned.

"What does it matter?"

"It's important. She might've been having seizures that have gone unnoticed."

"I've been with her, I would've noticed—"

"Not ones like yesterday. Milder seizures. She might not have noticed them herself, and just took them as feeling strange. They could've caused her memory loss."

"Would they have caused her to try and get out of a moving car?"

Foreman didn't answer. The man sighed.

"It was the right hand. She was already psychotic, she wanted to get out, thought I was lying to her and that nothing was real. Then she had the fit."

Foreman nodded. Neither epilepsy nor schizophrenia seemed right to him, not in a complete sense, and he refused to believe that there was a third condition explaining the remaining symptoms. He thought the drugs she'd been given could've played a part, but her history of erratic blood pressure and disturbed behaviour predated those drugs.

"Did she have a fever at any point? Headaches? Fatigue?" he asked.

"She had a cough. Maybe a stuffy nose."

"She did seem to grab her head, though," the kid added. "As though it hurt."

The father turned towards him.

"When?"

"When I spoke to her. After the gas station thing… "

"But there was no fever," the father said, impatiently. "The doctor said there was no sign of infections in her blood tests. They looked at that."

Foreman closed the file he'd been holding, and stood again.

"Dr. Hirsch has not confirmed epilepsy yet. You were right to seek a second opinion. I will get back to you once I have finished my assessment."

The pair seemed ready to ask him more questions, but they were slow to collect themselves and Foreman turned his back on them and walked back down the hall towards Room 410 before they could manage to speak.

He went inside, and stayed for what felt like hours, but all he had once he was done was a collection of more non-specific physical symptoms, a patient who seemed compelled to pace or fidget and who would not heed to half of his instructions, and a doctor eager to turn on his medieval torture machine. A new EEG showed spikes consistent with a seizure but it did not look like temporal lobe epilepsy, and further tests and ultrasounds he ordered to check on liver and kidney function turned out fine.

"I don't think this is epilepsy," he told Hirsch, back in his office. "If you can't treat her here, I think it would be in her best interest to be moved temporarily to Diagnostics, so that more possibilities can be eliminated before proceeding to more invasive procedures."

Dr. Hirsch frowned.

"Has Dr. House agreed to take her case?"

"He has," Foreman lied. Dr. Hirsch, surprisingly, seemed relieved.

"Very well," he said. "You can ask the family permission for the transfer."

Foreman frowned, and Dr. Hirsch, answering the implicit question, simply shrugged.

"This isn't exciting enough for House," he said, with a smug smile. "And if I'm right, she'll wind up back here anyway."

/

DON

Friday Morning, December 17, 1971

/

Last night was a blur, and he sort of preferred it that way. There was a blank somewhere there, too, a moment in which he'd moved from one placed to another that he didn't quite remember, but he didn't want to try and search his mind for it either. The present, he imagined, would be easier to focus on, but that did not prove to be true. He'd been sitting next to Pat for hours, in silence, and now it would soon be noon, he was hungry and in pain, and he was starting to wonder what the immediate future would be like.

He needed to call Henry, and would they finally have to tell Betty? If Sally had an incurable disease, they would have to tell her eventually; otherwise letting her think she just didn't want to visit would clearly be worse. He actually found that he wanted to tell Betty. He had wanted to speak to her during his last call to Henry, but he'd said that he sounded off and that she would know something was wrong. That she already suspected.

Also, he needed to see Bobby and Gene. He needed to call Roger, and Jim Cutler, and let them know he was taking his vacation time after all, and he needed to tell Peggy she should take over his meetings and then Peggy would want to know what was happening, so he would have to tell her. And then maybe, she'd show up. See the mess he was, how close he was to running out to the streets in search of the nearest bar or liqueur store, and just stay there until he couldn't feel anymore. She'd know, just from one good look, and though she wasn't there, and he would not call, would not drink, he could already feel the shame from how much he wanted to.

Pat had stood at some point, he wasn't sure when, but now he came back round the hallway and sat back down.

"The phone by the ER is out of order. You have to use the one by the free clinic," he said, and opened the wrapper of a chocolate bar. Don glanced at it.

"Did you speak to your mother?"

"Yes. She'll be coming by later today, I hope that's okay."

Don hesitated.

"Pat. You don't have to stay."

"Mr. Draper, I—"

"Don.

"Uhm… Don," he said it with effort, as though the name was alien to him. "I want to stay."

Don knew that if he told the kid to leave, he would, and a small part of him wanted to do that. But he didn't.

"How did you two meet?" he asked, instead, and he cleared his throat but kept his eyes on the ground and his voice grave.

"I was friends with a friend of hers. You knew him maybe, he was your neighbour, I think. Glen?"

It was hard, but the memory was there and he nodded. That boy had asked him why everything always turned out so crappy on the day Lane died, and then he'd let him drive his old car for hours from New York to his school.

"And he's not your friend anymore?" he asked. Pat frowned.

"What?"

"You said he was your friend."

Pat looked away. "He was killed in Vietnam early this year. He volunteered."

Don swallowed hard, and wished he had not asked.

"I came back from Boston for his memorial. Sally was there…" he stopped, sensing Don didn't really want to hear anymore. "It's Charlie, by the way," he said. Don turned.

"What?"

"My name? It's Charlie."

"Oh." Don nodded slowly. "Okay." He brushed his hair back with his hands and it felt dirty. "When's your mother getting here?"

"Sometime after lunch, she said."

"Okay."

That would give him enough time to eat and find some way to freshen up. And maybe feel like a person again.

Leaning on the wall, he stood, and he draped his discarded coat over his shoulder.

"I've got some calls to make," he said. "Then we can go and get something to eat. Stay in case the doctor shows up."

"Sure."

He made his way back down to the ground floor and past the main reception to the free clinic, and there he had to wait in line to use the phone. Three callers later, Henry picked up at the first ringtone.

"Betty has been placing calls to your apartment and your office. She knows you and Sally haven't been home."

Don, taken aback, leaned into the booth.

"I thought you said she was in the ICU."

"She was. She got out yesterday, which you'd know if you had called me from New Jersey. I already spoke to Sally's doctor, this morning. He says you're being uncooperative."

Don scoffed.

"Uncooperative? He wants me to agree to have her electrocuted. It's insane."

"Don, epilepsy is a serious illness. She could die."

"They're not even sure that's what she has. I've asked for a second opinion, there's another doctor on her case now. What did you tell Betty?"

He heard Henry sigh.

"You're going to have to talk to her. Play it down if you can, but I don't think we'll be able to keep it from her much longer. She knows I've been lying and she's getting anxious."

"Can't we say she's travelling?"

"Betty knows she wouldn't leave without seeing her. And Don, it's Friday. You need to come for the the boys, they can't stay with my mother this weekend."

Don cursed under her breath.

"No. What do you want me to do with them, bring them here? I don't even know where I'm staying."

"Well, figure something out. I'm sorry, but it's been over three weeks since you last saw them. They're asking for you, they're asking for Sally, and that's a conversation you need to have. I'm not going to be home for them."

Don rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"They didn't need to know."

"They're not so young, anymore, Don. Give them some credit. They know how to behave in a hospital, and it could help Sally to see them."

He could imagine them, waiting next to him in the hospital benches, hearing Sally scream through the walls in her room.

"This isn't like visiting Betty," he said, his voice hushed. "It's bad. They can't—I can't…"

"You don't have a choice. They need you. So get a hotel, get a sitter, whatever you need to do, you do it."

"For God's sake, Henry—"

"They're your children, Don! Not just Sally, all of them. I'll let them know you'll be coming for them tomorrow, and call Betty tonight."

"I can't call Betty."

"I'll tell her if you don't, and you know it won't be as civil if that happens."

Don scoffed.

"I have enough to deal with without you threatening me."

"It's not a threat. It's her daughter, and she's my wife. She has a right to know."

"She'll want to come here. She'll want to see her and she can't see her, you don't want her to see her, not right now."

And she'd see him, the mess of a father she was leaving behind with her children.

"Tell her in a way that she won't, then," Henry said, and he seemed to see right through Don's fear. "This is a disease. It's nobody's fault. She needs to know you're in control, that you're taking care of this."

But was he? He was barely one more chat with a doctor away from fleeing, out into the cold, in search of a drink. But if it was Henry who talked to her, then she would know - as she probably already did - that he was just a coward. The blame would be his whether he deserved it or not.

"Okay," he said, and swallowed hard. "I'll call tonight."

/

DR. ERIC FOREMAN

Neurologist

/

He dropped the blue folder over the ones the team was currently reviewing, and the slap of the paper hitting the desk made them all turn his way.

"I have a case," he said, and sat down. "Sixteen year old girl, no history of mental illness, with three psychotic breakdowns in the last three weeks, and three grand mal seizures in the last two days."

Houses didn't even look up.

"Epilepsy. Next!"

"There'a more," Foreman said. "Psychosis happened before the seizures. There's fatigue, poor eye motions—"

"I said NEXT—"

"...poor balance and muscle control, erratic blood pressure, incoherent speech, shaking right hand, no lesions, clear bloodwork, EEG does not resemble results from temporal lobe epilepsy."

"Viral encephalitis? Chase volunteered.

"It's not our case!" House protested.

"No, no fever," Foreman said. "Blood count showed no signs of infection."

"What about a lesion?"

"Or a secondary infection?"

"She's been having symptoms for over three weeks, viral encephalitis would've put her in a coma by now."

"Foreman, your status as team leader is hereby revoked." House turned towards the only woman. "Thirteen is now the team leader. And she will go and find me a case and/or do my clinic hours."

Thirteen didn't lift her head from the file, and kept reading through it. House turned to Chase.

"Chase? Would you do me the honour?"

"House," Foreman said. "It's not epilepsy, and Peter Hirsch is going to start ECT if I transfer her back."

"ECT?" Chase said.

"You already had her transferred?" Taub said.

"Well, aren't you the hero?" House said. "So, what did Hirsch ever do to you?"

"We don't have a case, we haven't had one in weeks, we might as well—"

"Take yours?" Taub said.

"Was he a bully? He was at Johns Hopkins too, right?"

"I think Dr. Cuddy would be very interested to know how many cases you've dismissed these last few weeks."

"Whoah!" House rested back on his seat and looked back at the rest of his team. "The power's really gone to his head."

Thirteen seemed to look more closely at the file.

"Movement disorders are not symptoms of epilepsy, or schizophrenia," she said.

"And ECT is not an effective treatment for epilepsy anyway," Chase said. "If he's going to go all the way, at least a lobotomy would give him a chance for success."

"He probably settled on the ECT for the schizophrenia," House said, and picked up the file. "And now the seizures are giving him a reason to push the timeline. I heard he's doing a study on it. Wants a spot at the Yale Centre." He quickly went through the pages, then dropped it back into the middle of the conference table. "Okay, Foreman. You win. I'll be your avenging angel."

"Hirsch is from Wisconsin State."

"Is he? Well, that explains a lot."

Foreman stood from his seat.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"Seeing about the transfer."

"In the middle of a differential? Sit back down."

"House—"

House stood, and wiped his chalkboard, then started writing.

"So, first symptoms were psychiatric..." He wrote down psychosis and paranoia. "Then…"

"Short term memory loss, insomnia, fatigue.." Thirteen read.

"Involuntary muscle movements, stiffness, speech difficulties. Hirsch attempted a neuro this morning, but she was not responsive, and has not spoken a word since her last seizure," Foreman added.

House kept on writing, nearly filling the board.

"Does she have a dog?" Taub asked.

"No dog, no dog bites. No travelling either."

"How about Guillain-Barré, then?"

"She'd have to be sedated for a lumbar puncture. That might be hard to do right now, and the timeline doesn't really fit."

"She was in a car accident." Chase said. "Could've had a lesion that went undetected."

"Is she still on the antipsychotics?" Thirteen asked.

"Yes."

"There were no seizures before she was placed on haloperidol. Neuroleptic malignant syndrome would explain most of her symptoms."

"Cut her off them," House said. "They don't seem to be helping much anyway. Now, assuming she has some kind of encephalopathy, what does that leave us with?"

"Well, a lot."

"Rule out the main viral possibilities first. Search for lesions, test for herpesvirus. Go."

/

DON

Friday Afternoon, December 17, 1971

/

Don bought a fresh set of clothes at the University store, and after Charlie had left for the day with his mother, he checked himself into a hotel that was closest to the hospital. The Pattersons kindly offered to host him but there was no way he would commute from Greenwich, and going back to his apartment in Manhattan didn't make much sense anymore. Though there was a part of him that craved it, he knew he couldn't go back to work, and he figured it would be easier to sleep in the hotel anyway, without having to deal with the mess of Sally's room. Later that night, he would call Betty from there.

He ate alone in the hospital cafeteria, and though he had barely spoken to Charlie since his phone call to Henry, he found himself missing his presence. He couldn't help the bags under his eyes and the dirt stuck to the sock over his cast, and he was getting the sort of looks he hated while he sat there. He even, briefly, considered calling Peggy again, if only to have something to do. He'd notified his office that he was taking his vacation time after all through Meredith, just so he wouldn't have to face Peggy's questions and her sympathy, but he was starting to regret that decision.

When he saw Sally's second doctor approaching him, he actually welcomed the distraction.

"Mr. Draper, could we speak for a moment?"

Don stood and followed the doctor, who this time was joined by two others, a man and a woman. They stopped in a hallway in between offices and exam rooms with glass doors.

"We would like to transfer Sally to the Diagnostics department," Dr. Foreman told him.

Don frowned.

"And Dr. Hirsch…"

"Dr. House, the head of the department, would take over the case."

"So you don't think she has epilepsy?"

"We don't," the women said.

"What about the schizophrenia?"

"We believe it's very likely that she's suffering from a brain condition that would account for all of her symptoms. Including the psychological ones."

Don gritted his teeth, and nodded.

"We will also need consent to perform a lumbar puncture," the third doctor said. "It's not a dangerous procedure, but she will need to be sedated for it in case she becomes agitated."

A clipboard was handed to him, with a copied form in it. He read half of it before having to pull his eyes away from the description of the procedure. Then he signed. The doctors turned away and disappeared into the elevators, then moments later Sally's bed was being wheeled out towards the glass exam room. She was lying down, calm and still, but as she passed right by him he noticed a twitch in her face, like a squint, lasting less than a second. She looked at him for an instant and then she turned away, as though she'd seen something she didn't want to.

"Sally?" he said, and followed the bed into her new room. She kept her face turned away, avoiding him, and she pulled her hand away when he came to her side and softly touched her. Two of the doctors were also in the room, staring, and Don wished they would leave. He sat in the chair by the corner, and noticed restraints were tied on Sally's wrists and ankles. "Sally."

Even though he knew she wouldn't turn to look at him, and that there would be no recognition in her face, he couldn't help but hope, every time he said her name, that she'd come back to herself and be normal again. And it felt like a soul-shattering disappointment every time she didn't.

He avoided the eyes of the doctors as he stood, and then he turned, left the room, and made his way across the hospital hallways towards the payphone by the free clinic.

/

"Hello, Bets."

It had taken him almost half an hour, and three long conversations with random nurses, to gather enough courage to dial her hospital room number. She said his name, dryly, and the wheezing tone of her voice almost made him hang up right then and there.

"What's going on?" she asked, and paused to breathe in. "Why aren't you at work? Or in your apartment?"

Don held on tight to the phone.

"I'm in a hospital, Bets."

"What?"

"It's Sally. Doctors think she might have… " He didn't want to say 'brain disease'. "Some sort of infection, that's making her act strangely. "

"Since when? Strangely how?" She coughed. "Why are you only telling me this now?"

"I wanted to have more information, I… The doctors, they didn't know…"

"That's bullshit, Don." She coughed again. "You would've kept on lying if I hadn't found out."

"Betty…"

"You and Henry, you think you're doing me a favour? I'm not dead yet."

Don took a steadying breath.

"It started out as nothing. I didn't think it would last this long."

"Why should I believe you now?"

"You can ask Henry. If you want, I could also get one of the doctors to talk to you."

"Don… Will she be okay?" Suddenly the harshness was gone from her voice, and instead she sounded shaky. "Can they fix it?"

"She'll come through," Don said softly, and swallowed hard. "She's in good hands."

"I want to be there."

"Birdie… You can't."

He could hear her breathing heavily, and it took her a while to respond.

"Can I talk to her?"

"I'm at a payphone. I'll try and arrange it."

"Do it. Don't just say you're going to do it."

"I'll do it."

"Tell her I love her."

"I will."

Don hung up first, and the lies felt like pieces of lead weighing him down. He pulled apart from the payphone, bought a coffee, then walked out into the snow to wait for a cab to take him back to his hotel. He waited, quietly, for a moment, then burned himself on the coffee and he flung it into the whiteness beyond. He had never hated lying so much.

No amount of telling himself it was the right thing to do would make him feel any better.


End file.
